House of Eratosthenes

1a obsolete : to take part in conversation, discussion, or argument
b : to talk with another so as to influence actions or opinions (can’t reason with them)

2 : to use the faculty of reason so as to arrive at conclusions

Reasoning:

the use of reason; especially : the drawing of inferences or conclusions through the use of reason

Something has happened. In years past, these people who today call themselves “liberals” used to do some of this. Now they don’t, or at least, they do it much less often than normal people. Which really says something, because normal people are not involved in social-media “debates” as often as these people who today call themselves “liberals.”

Maybe I come close. But my observation is about normal people. So, those who go by this label, are involved in arguments a lot more, and they use reasoning a lot less. Taking all of the above definitions into account and applying it to everyday situations, we might think of “reasoning” as traversing a sort of route on a map, with facts at one end, conclusions at the other.

It’s pretty hard to live an adult life, even for a day or so, without doing some of this. So how do they get around doing it? Part of it is, conclusions are really just opinions, and to an emotionally-invested liberal there’s no distinction to be made between facts vs. opinions. In their world, this stuff is all in the same salad bowl, it’s all just something you say to make people agree with you.

Their enduring position, and their attitude, is “accept it uncritically or else I shall call you a troglodyte.” Or something worse: Bigot, sexist, racist, homophobe. Mere insults carry a threat of social shunning, but the “ist” words carry a threat of vocational ostracism. Using plain simple words, that means career-death. That actually means something to a conservative.

The unreasoners are encumbered by a paradox. They want to think their ideas are so emphatically, so self-evidently true, so elevated above the need for any inspection, deliberation or contemplation — reasoning — that anyone capable of even the most cursory level of responsible thinking would not only sign on, but assist the liberal in eschewing any dissent. Truth is, though, if an idea ever did rise to that level of “everyone gets it, no need to discuss,” it would lose all appeal for them. They don’t want to promote any ideas that are self-evidently true, that everyone with a working brain automatically gets. That’s boring.

That would be something like: If you think the police are prejudiced against you and you’re afraid of them…start this urgent business of protecting yourself, by not breaking the law. Or: If we want the economy to do better, make it less expensive to start, and operate, a business. Things like these make far too much sense, so this is all something to be left to conservatives. They’re much more fond of things like: What is our country doing to make the terrorists want to attack us? Or: We have to sign these international accords so we can bring the planet’s climate (back) under some kind of “control.” Or things that contradict not just common sense, but themselves: The economy is doing wonderfully because of Obama’s wise stewardship — it is urgent that we elect Hillary so she can clean up this terrible mess. Cops are racist, let’s have strict gun control so only cops have the guns.

It is only when they take such risible positions, that the unreasoners start flocking to their go-to, like bugs to a zapper: It’s just so obvious, there’s no point discussing it with someone who doesn’t get it. Ever notice? They don’t do that with things that really are just obvious.

Nate Winchester said it best: their operating system really is “feelz b4 realz.” (it’s probably worse than that, in fact — just “feelz,” full stop). Saying (and believing!) “cops are racists!” feels good to them, and so does “we need gun control!”, so both of those things are true, even though the conclusion out in the real world is “only racist cops have guns.”

Those social media “debates” you reference are a large part of this. I’ve concluded that Twitter is the worst thing to happen to the human brain since the discovery of alcohol. Nietzsche himself couldn’t compress a cogent argument into 140 characters. And “likes” and “shares” don’t make something true. In fact, back when CisHetPat white males taught that oppressive social construct called “logic,” this was known as the ad populum fallacy… but calling something a “fallacy” causes feelbad, so there’s no such thing as a fallacy. Click “share” if you agree!
- Severian | 05/05/2016 @ 06:18
Ah, but you see Sev, they realize this. That’s why the smarter cuttlefish constantly alter social media to keep out the older-and-on-average less technically sophisticated conservatives. That is why:

1.) They got rid of “dislike”.
2.) They brought back “dislike” in some formats, but you had to start logging in to dislike.
3.) You had to start logging in to “like.”
4.) They banned “fake accounts,” ie accounts of people who repeatedly liked or dislike topics in opposition to liberal ideas.
5.) They delete and ban conservative posts in moderated forums.
6.) They repeatedly falsify claims of threats in non-moderated forums to ban the same.
7.) Facebook been deleting conservative accounts and posts wholesale for years, while ignoring repeated violations of their ToS, up-to-and-including death threats by liberals towards conservatives for years.

The “feelz before realz” always works for the slower, repetitive sheeplefish because they never are put in a position where there is self-reflection. Case in point, yesterday I was in a forum where one claimed that no Republican legislation was ever good, but Dem legislation was conversely always socially beneficial. When the inevitable posts of constant Republican support for Democrat-party opposed civil-rights legislation was brought up, they used the “magical switching parties” argument. When that argument was flayed and filleted, the sheeplefish became both fearful and aggressive, darting hither and thither in a madness of foamy cut-n-pastes irrelevant to the conversation and passive-aggressive threats that their territory of mind was violated. There was no reasoned response of “You know, you make valid points, I’ll have to think about that.
- P_Ang | 05/05/2016 @ 11:41
“Truth is, though, if an idea ever did rise to that level of “everyone gets it, no need to discuss,” it would ….”
Be called “common sense”, with no opportunity to “win” any imagined issues of, and by, elaborate construct.
Like…say….”talent/foodie/wine” competitions. (a la Z Blog)
- CaptDMO | 05/05/2016 @ 19:22
When an idea really does reach the level of, “so self-evidently true that anyone capable of even the most cursory level of responsible thinking would sign on”, there’s no need to debate it, because, by definition, everyone agrees that it’s obviously true. We don’t debate whether rocks fall when you drop them, because they so obviously do.

And yet … so much of what liberals say today flies in the face of common sense. I’ve had conversations wtih feminists where they insist that men take just as much time off work for paternity leave as women take for maternity leave. I’ve had conversations with socialists who insist that people will work just as hard for no reward as they will for money. I’ve had conversations with gun control advocates where they insist that while violent maniacs may ignore laws against murder, kidnapping, and assault, they will obviously and inevitably obey a “no guns allowed” sign.

Of course, the fact that something seems obvious doesn’t prove it’s true. Sometimes the “obvious” turns out to be false. If liberals offerred actual evidence that things that 90% of us think are obvious are, in fact, false, we could have a serious discussion. But that’s not what they do. They simply assert that what we all see happen, every day, wherever we go, in fact is not really happening. If the liberals say that rocks float in mid-air when you drop them and you don’t agree, you must be a bigot or an anti-science religious zealot, because we just TOLD you that rocks float in mid-air. We have an expert from an organization with the word “science” in the name who said so.

Often they slip causally from “I wish this was true” or “wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where this was true” to “this is true”, and then from there to “how dare you claim it is not true”. Like, “wouldn’t it be great if everyone would work for the good of society instead of their own selfish desires” to “socialism CAN work as long as everyone works for the good of society instead of for money” to “how dare you suggest that people could be so selfish that they won’t work for the good of society!”. Or, “we should live in a world where everyone loves everyone and we all live in peace” to “it’s not that Muslims hate people of other religions, it’s all just a big misunderstanding” to “how dare you suggest that terrorists are Muslims!”. Etc.
- saneperson | 05/13/2016 @ 08:57

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

UnreasonersThursday, May 5th, 2016

Unreasoners
Thursday, May 5th, 2016