The Left operates on emotion and "feelings"--facts be damned--while the Right relies on logic and reason. Because those are different "frequencies", communication rarely occurs.
I ended up with an image of a wiser protester with a sign reading "the idiots are over there" and his sign shows a double headed arrow pointing to his left and right, or behind him and across the street (i.e., on both sides of the street).
On Haidt, how logical is it to still rely on emotion when you can read his results and conclusion and realize you are not using rationality - at least unless and until you really do try to do so?
A core national question is just how many/what fraction of the protesters were simply "showing up" as unpaid interested citizens (or non-citizens) to see what was going on, vs. the harder core paid insurrectionists? How much do they get paid? I have seen figures of $50M to $65M as the amounts these nation-wide protests must have cost the "oligarchs". If half the money is for "protestant talent", so maybe 25000 folks total? [$1000 / day? I would not want to try doing that for less!] Across 50+ cities? Still, trained, organized, supported with destructive resources (granite blocks? bricks?) they can cause a lot of damage and mayhem.
What I perhaps find hardest to understand is how so many citizens/ adults/ students can be so ignorant of our history and related cultural icons, etc. But then I graduated over 50 years ago, back when education still had a semblance of reality involved.
Regarding Jonathan Haidt's work, and also that of Daniel Kahneman in "Thinking, Fast and Slow," what they are telling us is that we're hard wired to make decisions based on intuition rather than reason. It was once a good survival instinct to react first and think about it later. It's very hard to break free from that pattern -- make an intuitive decision and then find reasons it must be correct. I just started a subscription to "The Skeptical Inquirer," and almost every conspiracy theory or misperception out there arises because folks make up their minds about something and then go with it with no evidence or reason. Back in December I wrote about all the drone sightings, implying that they were probably just aircraft because large numbers of big drones all over the place made no sense. Sure enough, in the first issue of TSI I received, one of the writers used a really good flight tracker app to prove that what people were IDing as drones were actually small planes heading to airports etc. But intuitively, a lot of people wanted them to be drones so that's what they saw.
I think that Trump generally goes with his intuition too much, but in the case with the war against Iran he is really thinking this one through. I believe the right answer is to use our bunker buster bombs to destroy Fordow, and I believe Trump will get there soon, as Iran continues to be stubborn about surrendering. From what I read, that's the only way to get rid of Iran's nuclear weapons program for good short of troops on the ground entering and destroying it. We'll see.
Recently read 2014 book by Stanislaw Dehaene, Consciousness and the Brain, which seems to support some of the fast/slow ideas, with a lot of unconscious activities influencing our understanding of our "conscious world". Related to this is my query into religious faith and transcendence vs. reason: I noticed many of my very smart friends were also deeply faith based in their beliefs, leading me to propose that both a desire for transcendence/religion [leading to enhanced social cooperation and related evolutionary survival] and logical cognitive abilities evolved in parallel. It could thus be this idea also plays into the fast/slow observations by Kahneman [whose book I have but have not read - darn] with both capabilities evolving together for maximum survival benefit.
Glad to hear about the TSI drone "scoop", as a rational answer. That the "observations" were collectively around NJ and thus perhaps Newark airport (??) might have been a clue as well??
On Fordow (depending on just what Israeli intelligence already knows), since the area is definitive, relatively contained/small, and isolated*, I vote for IDF troops actually entering the tunnels, etc., inventorying and fully destroying what they find (plus remove any existing uranium, "to be sure"); and leave the bunker buster for another day [or use it afterwards just to see how effective it was/is/would have been].
*also since they have control of the air and can keep infantry from interferring...
The Left operates on emotion and "feelings"--facts be damned--while the Right relies on logic and reason. Because those are different "frequencies", communication rarely occurs.
"... even if they are wrongheaded."
You are being a little too polite.
I ended up with an image of a wiser protester with a sign reading "the idiots are over there" and his sign shows a double headed arrow pointing to his left and right, or behind him and across the street (i.e., on both sides of the street).
On Haidt, how logical is it to still rely on emotion when you can read his results and conclusion and realize you are not using rationality - at least unless and until you really do try to do so?
A core national question is just how many/what fraction of the protesters were simply "showing up" as unpaid interested citizens (or non-citizens) to see what was going on, vs. the harder core paid insurrectionists? How much do they get paid? I have seen figures of $50M to $65M as the amounts these nation-wide protests must have cost the "oligarchs". If half the money is for "protestant talent", so maybe 25000 folks total? [$1000 / day? I would not want to try doing that for less!] Across 50+ cities? Still, trained, organized, supported with destructive resources (granite blocks? bricks?) they can cause a lot of damage and mayhem.
What I perhaps find hardest to understand is how so many citizens/ adults/ students can be so ignorant of our history and related cultural icons, etc. But then I graduated over 50 years ago, back when education still had a semblance of reality involved.
Regarding Jonathan Haidt's work, and also that of Daniel Kahneman in "Thinking, Fast and Slow," what they are telling us is that we're hard wired to make decisions based on intuition rather than reason. It was once a good survival instinct to react first and think about it later. It's very hard to break free from that pattern -- make an intuitive decision and then find reasons it must be correct. I just started a subscription to "The Skeptical Inquirer," and almost every conspiracy theory or misperception out there arises because folks make up their minds about something and then go with it with no evidence or reason. Back in December I wrote about all the drone sightings, implying that they were probably just aircraft because large numbers of big drones all over the place made no sense. Sure enough, in the first issue of TSI I received, one of the writers used a really good flight tracker app to prove that what people were IDing as drones were actually small planes heading to airports etc. But intuitively, a lot of people wanted them to be drones so that's what they saw.
I think that Trump generally goes with his intuition too much, but in the case with the war against Iran he is really thinking this one through. I believe the right answer is to use our bunker buster bombs to destroy Fordow, and I believe Trump will get there soon, as Iran continues to be stubborn about surrendering. From what I read, that's the only way to get rid of Iran's nuclear weapons program for good short of troops on the ground entering and destroying it. We'll see.
Recently read 2014 book by Stanislaw Dehaene, Consciousness and the Brain, which seems to support some of the fast/slow ideas, with a lot of unconscious activities influencing our understanding of our "conscious world". Related to this is my query into religious faith and transcendence vs. reason: I noticed many of my very smart friends were also deeply faith based in their beliefs, leading me to propose that both a desire for transcendence/religion [leading to enhanced social cooperation and related evolutionary survival] and logical cognitive abilities evolved in parallel. It could thus be this idea also plays into the fast/slow observations by Kahneman [whose book I have but have not read - darn] with both capabilities evolving together for maximum survival benefit.
Glad to hear about the TSI drone "scoop", as a rational answer. That the "observations" were collectively around NJ and thus perhaps Newark airport (??) might have been a clue as well??
On Fordow (depending on just what Israeli intelligence already knows), since the area is definitive, relatively contained/small, and isolated*, I vote for IDF troops actually entering the tunnels, etc., inventorying and fully destroying what they find (plus remove any existing uranium, "to be sure"); and leave the bunker buster for another day [or use it afterwards just to see how effective it was/is/would have been].
*also since they have control of the air and can keep infantry from interferring...
Excellent observations and commentary!