Beliefs that you've grown out of

-Free trade is corporatism.
-Minimum wage is the solution to poverty.
 
Pwent said:
similar to the "political stance" thread but on specific things that you believed when you were young until you were exposed to things that changed your mind

I'll start
-academia is filled with intelligent people
-more diversity results in less racism
-the news is supposed to inform people
Click to expand...
The news is still supposed to inform people. "Diversity" doesn't inherently have only a racial component to it, and academia is still filled with intelligent people.
 
I guess we're talking about political views since it's a war room thread?

When I was in high school, I was a typical constitutional conservative. I thought very highly of our Republic, of the concept of a modern western Democracy, I was convinced that our constitution is sufficient and effective in limiting our government, that it represents some sort of social contract, and that "conservative" politicians would fight for such a thing like "small government".
When I was 18 or so, I abandoned those beliefs more and more, at least from a philosophical point of view and at that time I started to read more 'extreme' literature. I don't think democracy is the God people want it to be, I don't think any state as it's described in the constitution will ever stay small and limited, I don't think a state can effectively limit itself, I don't think most people, including conservatives, are actually interested in that or care about it, let alone Republican politicians.

edit: also changed views on this "law and order" mentality and immigration
edit2: and on drugs
 
touchedbyjab said:
I'm just trying to avoid the dreaded dubble dubs.

Please, do tell me the bigotry of my statement; an insidious claim with no explaination is something I would expect from Fawlty but not you.
Click to expand...
Tell you what, you explain what you meant by ((They)), and if it isn't bigoted, then I'll apologize. Who exactly weren't innocent victims of persecution throughout history? Lawyers? Samoans?
 
ultramanhyata said:
That people are, for the most part, honest and good.
Click to expand...

I believe most people are, in certain morally decent societies, at least after their rebellious teen years. I find it interesting to see actual proof of morally decent societies

Growing up, I worked at two businesses, in n out and another local place, that had a "believe anything the customer tells you" policy. In that you can show up to in n out and say "hey yesterday I gave you guys a 50 but you thought it was a 20, you shortchanged me" and the manager will just give you the money and apologize.

Lots of customers were fully aware of these policies but very very few took advantage of it. In fact it usually pulled honest decent folk in, because they felt good to do business with other decent people

Enterprise rent a car is the same way, you can dispute practically any charge on your bill and they'll end up waiving it. Nordstrom lets you return anything, without a receipt, no matter how old it is. Yet those companies are extremely successful in their industries

I would guess you could run similar policies in Sweden and Germany (disregarding recent migrants).I do not believe you could have a similar policy in china or African countries

Sorry if I rambled off your one sentence, I just find it interesting to look into which societies foster honesty and decency, and which don't. It helps clear the question of "how do we achieve it?" I mean I live near Irvine and I leave my back door wide open almost 24/7 so my dog can come in and out, and I've never once had an issue. How can you create a similar level of trust and decency in other areas?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Traditional martial arts are effective in real combat.
 
IngaVovchanchyn said:
Tell you what, you explain what you meant by ((They)), and if it isn't bigoted, then I'll apologize. Who exactly weren't innocent victims of persecution throughout history? Lawyers? Samoans?
Click to expand...

Its those damn Samoan lawyers. Everything bad that has happened to them they deserve. Roaming island to island filing frivolous lawsuits, monsters.
 
Pwent said:
similar to the "political stance" thread but on specific things that you believed when you were young until you were exposed to things that changed your mind

I'll start
-academia is filled with intelligent people
-more diversity results in less racism
-the news is supposed to inform people
Click to expand...

All three of those are correct, though some clarification could help.

The average intelligence of university professors is far higher than the general population, and their level of knowledge in their fields on average is also far, far higher than that of the average person. I suspect you're trying to make some kind of anti-intellectual point that may or may not be valid (very likely not, though) but wouldn't dispute those statements.

Diversity seems to affect racism or xenophobia (which could be described as a form of it) differently with different amounts. As Noah Smith puts it (paraphrasing), one person in your neighborhood who looks different is a guest, 100 is an invasion, and 1,000 is just your neighbors. To get deeper, the rate of change seems to matter more than the level, and there can be different forms of racism that are affected differently. Note that in America, more diverse states were more resistant to Trumpism.

And of course the news is supposed to inform people, though the process is complicated. Profit and prestige are the primary motive of most of the successful individual companies, though, but the public determines what brings those things. Right now, a lot of the audience just wants the news to confirm their priors, and a company that is trying to inform will run afoul of them, as many mainstream outlets have, which puts pressure on them to avoid controversy more than really try to get the truth.

My three would be:

1. An independent thinker considers each issue on an individual basis and thus is equally likely to be "right" or "left" on any particular issue. Used to be surprised to hear someone I respected attach any label to themselves.

But really, your underlying intellectual approach will inevitably have you on the same "side" as people who think like you and against people who don't. Works far beyond politics, too. If you're the kind of person who believes in evaluating pitchers by "wins" and batters by "RBIs" and doesn't believe in "WAR" or even making park or era adjustments, you're also going to be the kind of person who believes poverty is just caused by people not working hard enough, and the gov't has to stop coddling them, etc. Or on a moral level, if you think that we as a society have a responsibility to help people who can't afford medical care get it (and not be ruined financially), you're also likely to think that we should prevent kids from going hungry, etc. Generally, I think empiricism, respect for Truth and various proven methods for attaining it, and broad empathy lead you in one direction, and tribalism, gut feelings, and hatred lead you another way.

2. You make your own luck, and people get what they deserve.

There's no way a normal-functioning person who knows people and has life experience can believe this. Lots of people are born with little chance of making a good income, and lots of people who make great incomes were incredibly lucky to do so. You can pile out counter examples, just as you can pile on examples of short basketball players being better than individual tall players, but overall, there's no way to credibly argue that we even have incomes and economic productivity lined up well, much less income and other things that we as a society wish to value. And as I've pointed out many times before, the gov't imposes a market-based society on us, which creates unemployment (that is, without a gov't, anyone can live off the land), and groups that are mostly unable to work--kids, the disabled, the elderly, students, etc. inevitably rely on workers to survive, and thus given a market-based distribution system, those workers need far above median incomes to have median lifestyles. It's a basic logical issue that first-world nations deal with through safety nets, and almost all of them deal with it better than we do.

3. Politicians are scum and dishonest as a class.

Very wrong, and people falsely believing it cause it to be more true because it leads to a reduction in standards, especially by the people on your "side" (the people who you should be demanding higher standards from). We rightly have very high standards for politicians, and they mostly fail to live up to them, and there's no problem with calling them to account for that, but we should remember the first half there. Trump is the first major presidential candidate who I think is worse at his job, more dishonest, and crueler than the average person.
 
That "freedom" is achieved through a lack of central government.
 
Also, if my family of immigrants could make it, no reason why others can't.
 
Fawlty said:
That the government is against me. That academic pursuits are not worth it.
Click to expand...
Thats a big one for me. I used to think the only purpose of college was to get a job and people with non stem related majors are wasting their time/money.

Really everything ive believed that I now consider wrong was based on a naive importance of money in the world and a flawed viewpoint of living for just the next step.
 
Jack V Savage said:
All three of those are correct, though some clarification could help.

The average intelligence of university professors is far higher than the general population, and their level of knowledge in their fields on average is also far, far higher than that of the average person. I suspect you're trying to make some kind of anti-intellectual point that may or may not be valid (very likely not, though) but wouldn't dispute those statements.

Diversity seems to affect racism or xenophobia (which could be described as a form of it) differently with different amounts. As Noah Smith puts it (paraphrasing), one person in your neighborhood who looks different is a guest, 100 is an invasion, and 1,000 is just your neighbors. To get deeper, the rate of change seems to matter more than the level, and there can be different forms of racism that are affected differently. Note that in America, more diverse states were more resistant to Trumpism.

And of course the news is supposed to inform people, though the process is complicated. Profit and prestige are the primary motive of most of the successful individual companies, though, but the public determines what brings those things. Right now, a lot of the audience just wants the news to confirm their priors, and a company that is trying to inform will run afoul of them, as many mainstream outlets have, which puts pressure on them to avoid controversy more than really try to get the truth.

My three would be:

1. An independent thinker considers each issue on an individual basis and thus is equally likely to be "right" or "left" on any particular issue. Used to be surprised to hear someone I respected attach any label to themselves.

But really, your underlying intellectual approach will inevitably have you on the same "side" as people who think like you and against people who don't. Works far beyond politics, too. If you're the kind of person who believes in evaluating pitchers by "wins" and batters by "RBIs" and doesn't believe in "WAR" or even making park or era adjustments, you're also going to be the kind of person who believes poverty is just caused by people not working hard enough, and the gov't has to stop coddling them, etc. Or on a moral level, if you think that we as a society have a responsibility to help people who can't afford medical care get it (and not be ruined financially), you're also likely to think that we should prevent kids from going hungry, etc. Generally, I think empiricism, respect for Truth and various proven methods for attaining it, and broad empathy lead you in one direction, and tribalism, gut feelings, and hatred lead you another way.

2. You make your own luck, and people get what they deserve.

There's no way a normal-functioning person who knows people and has life experience can believe this. Lots of people are born with little chance of making a good income, and lots of people who make great incomes were incredibly lucky to do so. You can pile out counter examples, just as you can pile on examples of short basketball players being better than individual tall players, but overall, there's no way to credibly argue that we even have incomes and economic productivity lined up well, much less income and other things that we as a society wish to value. And as I've pointed out many times before, the gov't imposes a market-based society on us, which creates unemployment (that is, without a gov't, anyone can live off the land), and groups that are mostly unable to work--kids, the disabled, the elderly, students, etc. inevitably rely on workers to survive, and thus given a market-based distribution system, those workers need far above median incomes to have median lifestyles. It's a basic logical issue that first-world nations deal with through safety nets, and almost all of them deal with it better than we do.

3. Politicians are scum and dishonest as a class.

Very wrong, and people falsely believing it cause it to be more true because it leads to a reduction in standards, especially by the people on your "side" (the people who you should be demanding higher standards from). We rightly have very high standards for politicians, and they mostly fail to live up to them, and there's no problem with calling them to account for that, but we should remember the first half there. Trump is the first major presidential candidate who I think is worse at his job, more dishonest, and crueler than the average person.
Click to expand...

I believe most people who work in academia are educated people who lacked the intelligence to become successful in the real world, and thus retreated to the safe haven of academia. If they were able to make more money or impact outside of academia, they would.

Racism is caused by negative experiences+generalization. The negative experiences do not necessarily need to be first hand. For example, if the first 5 eskimo people you ever met, robbed you, you would be very wary of the 6th or 7th and ultimately generalize all eskimos, assuming they behave the same way. A country with no racial diversity would have no racism because there would be nobody to be racist against. I have traveled to racially homogeneous countries and realized that they have very little discussion of race or racism because people rarely have racial differences. Racial discrimination very rarely happens in vietnam for example because 95%+ people are ethnically viet.

To use your example of "100 people in your neighborhood is an invasion", with 0 people there wouldnt even be a discussion

Almost all of our mainstream media sources are not designed to inform. They are news-based commentary. The viewers are not the customers, the viewers are the product. The people who actually pay are those who want to show content to convince viewers, whether it is for the purpose of advertising, or convincing of a political agenda.

I believe the average non-local politician is more dishonest and less trustworthy than the average population, because honesty and trustworthiness is not conducive to success in politics. the best way to be successful in politics is to promise great things and then do whatever makes your campaign donors happy.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
- News can be trusted in any form

- Professors actually give a shit about their students. Of all the profs I have had during the 5.5 years it took me to get a 4 year degree only two actually gave a shit about how their students were doing and as such are the only two I still speak to

- That hard work actually pays off
 
That smaller government is de facto better government. I've evolved to efficient government is better government.

That everyone who supports the free market does so because they actually think it's better. I've come to realize that some supporters of the free market only support it when it's helping them. When the free market stops caring about them they start supporting government intervention.

That "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is applicable to the speaker as much as it applies to the audience.
 
Pwent said:
I believe most people who work in academia are educated people who lacked the intelligence to become successful in the real world, and thus retreated to the safe haven of academia. If they were able to make more money or impact outside of academia, they would.
Click to expand...

Lol.
 
Pwent said:
similar to the "political stance" thread but on specific things that you believed when you were young until you were exposed to things that changed your mind

I'll start
-academia is filled with intelligent people
-more diversity results in less racism
-the news is supposed to inform people
Click to expand...
Intelligence can be measured many different ways, but Academia is as prone to the Peter Principle as anything else.
Do you think Canada is more racist because it is so diverse? You're wrong.
Far far too many people get their news from social media.

Sometimes your posts can be interesting; I almost forget why I find your AV vaguely offensive; and then you come out with silly bullshit and remind me. Is it from drugs?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,236,578
Messages
55,428,148
Members
174,774
Latest member
Judoka_Noob

Share this page

Back
Top