An Awareness Campaign
This was a topic I had attempted to talk about at SkeptiCamp NYC 2016 (http://ift.tt/2gpaDZe). However, things ran late, and a large chunk of my time was cut off. Although I managed to get out most of my main points, in a rather hurried manner, I figured I would produce this thread to both elaborate on my ideas, and to reboot the discussion. It is possible that some SkeptiCamp attendees might be joining this forum as a result.
Those of you who read "The Righteous Mind", by Johnathan Haidt, will find most of this familiar, since I am blatantly ripping off a lot of his stuff. (Apologies for that!)
Welcome to the True Taste Restaurant
Imagine walking into a restaurant where the only items on the menu were various types of sweeteners: cane sugar, honey, molasses, Sweet-n-Low, Equal, Stevia, etc. And, all you would be served are spoons filled with the ones you ordered.
You ask the manager "How's business?" and he replies: "Terrible, actually. But, at least we are doing better than the place down the street that only serves samples of salt."
That restaurant doesn't exist. But, according to an elaborate study carried out by Haidt, it is analogous to how morality seems to exist among different groups of people.
See the chart image attached below. It summarizes how liberals seem value only a couple of principles, as the "True Morality", while completely dismissing several others. Whereas conservatives seem to accept a wider palate of "taste sensations" as part of their moral foundations.
Liberals do NOT need to agree with those values, but UNDERSTANDING them is an important key to communicating BETTER ideas to conservative folks. Finding ways to *appeal* to conservative values can improve the acceptance of liberal ones.
Of course: Conservatives could also be said to have moral blind spots, but according to the chart, not as bad as liberals do.
For this post, I am leaving out lots of things. The book goes into great detail about how the study was designed and carried out, using various (often rude) questions to isolate the various components of morality.
I am also leaving out the rather fascinating complication of where libertarians fit into this. Haidt spends a good amount of time explaining how his theory had to be re-worked to better explain them.
However, this thread is only intended to be an awareness campaign, not an exhaustive book-length exploration. (There is already a book for that!) This thread is just a teaser to help you become aware of these blind spots, so that you know to read more about them.
Yins and Yangs
Both liberals and conservatives can learn something important from each other's moral values. Liberals emphasize the following 'good points', that perhaps conservatives can take into heart, more effectively:
* Government needs to restrain corporations from doing their worst: Many of them WILL impose externalities (that is: push their own problems) onto innocent people, influence government in unfair ways (such as campaign contributions), and limit the rights of citizens, if they can get away with it. Not all corporations, but enough that completely free markets would not be an adequate solution.
* Some problems can be solved with regulation: The removal of lead from gasoline is a classic example.
But, at the same time, there are also some lessons conservatives could teach liberals about the world:
* Markets are Miraculous: Healthcare cost is less efficient when you can't actually see the costs. Imagine if you bought food from the supermarket the same way: Your items would be rung up, and you would pay a small copay, while Food Insurance covered most of the rest of it. You might get billed later for items that were not covered. I know the analogy is not a very fair one. But, perhaps there is a point to be made about how markets do not need to be over-regulated.
* You Can't Help "Bees" by Destroying the "Hive": A lot of the effort to support ethnic diversity and globalization might b backfiring because most of those efforts do not take Social Capital into account. This is a concept that is a little hard to explain. (The book goes into it more thoroughly.) But, it seems the ideal of "bringing people together" can only work well in certain ways. Too often it can lead to a sense of distrust, among certain people, that can't be forced to be overridden.
Why It Matters
Well, with Donald Trump as our President-elect I suppose it's pretty obvious why this matters, now! But, importantly: Some of us saw this coming!
On June 17, 2015,I happened to notice the cover of The Daily News (NYC newspaper). It said "Clown Runs for Prez", depicting Trump with a red nose and clown makeup. THAT was the day I predicted our country's doom: That Donald Trump might actually win this thing. Instead of laughing the menace off, I felt he needed to be treated as a threat.
I can laugh at a LOT of things. But, Trump is not one of them. My training in understanding conservatives had me thinking differently on this election, than most other people I knew. I needed to encourage others to take him seriously, as well. So, I took seriously his chances of winning.
How serious, you ask? I bet real money on it. I did NOT WANT him to win. But, I predicted this might happen, anyway!
A table of my bets is below. Forum regulars might recognize one of the betting partners:
My efforts, obviously, were in vain. But, I am only one person, with not even 200 Facebook friends nor Twitter followers. If MORE liberal-minded people, including the Democratic candidates, had read the books I had read, and seen the things I had seen, perhaps this could have been avoided. THAT is why this matters!!
(By the way, the money I collect from these bets will go to charities that will help fight Trump. And,
if the electoral college happens to "go faithless" and reverse the vote, then that means I lost the bets and will need to pay out accordingly. However, I would be OKAY with that!)
Summary and Future Discussion
What you just read was adapted from my original presentation notes. But, there is one presentation that covers these concepts better than I ever could. Johnathan Haidt's TED Talk:
http://ift.tt/1vL1YqV
The idea for my original presentation was to open with a few memes from liberal social media sites, and ask how everyone felt about each one: Were they "fair" or not. Then, after explaining some of this stuff, I would display them again, to see if anyone changed their minds. I did not have time to do that, but perhaps in another post of this thread, I will go into the examples I had chosen.
Also for another future post, I want to talk about how these ideas tie into other books I had read, from authors such as Carol Tavris and Steven Pinker, etc.
This was a topic I had attempted to talk about at SkeptiCamp NYC 2016 (http://ift.tt/2gpaDZe). However, things ran late, and a large chunk of my time was cut off. Although I managed to get out most of my main points, in a rather hurried manner, I figured I would produce this thread to both elaborate on my ideas, and to reboot the discussion. It is possible that some SkeptiCamp attendees might be joining this forum as a result.
Those of you who read "The Righteous Mind", by Johnathan Haidt, will find most of this familiar, since I am blatantly ripping off a lot of his stuff. (Apologies for that!)
Welcome to the True Taste Restaurant
Imagine walking into a restaurant where the only items on the menu were various types of sweeteners: cane sugar, honey, molasses, Sweet-n-Low, Equal, Stevia, etc. And, all you would be served are spoons filled with the ones you ordered.
You ask the manager "How's business?" and he replies: "Terrible, actually. But, at least we are doing better than the place down the street that only serves samples of salt."
That restaurant doesn't exist. But, according to an elaborate study carried out by Haidt, it is analogous to how morality seems to exist among different groups of people.
See the chart image attached below. It summarizes how liberals seem value only a couple of principles, as the "True Morality", while completely dismissing several others. Whereas conservatives seem to accept a wider palate of "taste sensations" as part of their moral foundations.
Liberals do NOT need to agree with those values, but UNDERSTANDING them is an important key to communicating BETTER ideas to conservative folks. Finding ways to *appeal* to conservative values can improve the acceptance of liberal ones.
Of course: Conservatives could also be said to have moral blind spots, but according to the chart, not as bad as liberals do.
For this post, I am leaving out lots of things. The book goes into great detail about how the study was designed and carried out, using various (often rude) questions to isolate the various components of morality.
I am also leaving out the rather fascinating complication of where libertarians fit into this. Haidt spends a good amount of time explaining how his theory had to be re-worked to better explain them.
However, this thread is only intended to be an awareness campaign, not an exhaustive book-length exploration. (There is already a book for that!) This thread is just a teaser to help you become aware of these blind spots, so that you know to read more about them.
Yins and Yangs
Both liberals and conservatives can learn something important from each other's moral values. Liberals emphasize the following 'good points', that perhaps conservatives can take into heart, more effectively:
* Government needs to restrain corporations from doing their worst: Many of them WILL impose externalities (that is: push their own problems) onto innocent people, influence government in unfair ways (such as campaign contributions), and limit the rights of citizens, if they can get away with it. Not all corporations, but enough that completely free markets would not be an adequate solution.
* Some problems can be solved with regulation: The removal of lead from gasoline is a classic example.
But, at the same time, there are also some lessons conservatives could teach liberals about the world:
* Markets are Miraculous: Healthcare cost is less efficient when you can't actually see the costs. Imagine if you bought food from the supermarket the same way: Your items would be rung up, and you would pay a small copay, while Food Insurance covered most of the rest of it. You might get billed later for items that were not covered. I know the analogy is not a very fair one. But, perhaps there is a point to be made about how markets do not need to be over-regulated.
* You Can't Help "Bees" by Destroying the "Hive": A lot of the effort to support ethnic diversity and globalization might b backfiring because most of those efforts do not take Social Capital into account. This is a concept that is a little hard to explain. (The book goes into it more thoroughly.) But, it seems the ideal of "bringing people together" can only work well in certain ways. Too often it can lead to a sense of distrust, among certain people, that can't be forced to be overridden.
Why It Matters
Well, with Donald Trump as our President-elect I suppose it's pretty obvious why this matters, now! But, importantly: Some of us saw this coming!
On June 17, 2015,I happened to notice the cover of The Daily News (NYC newspaper). It said "Clown Runs for Prez", depicting Trump with a red nose and clown makeup. THAT was the day I predicted our country's doom: That Donald Trump might actually win this thing. Instead of laughing the menace off, I felt he needed to be treated as a threat.
I can laugh at a LOT of things. But, Trump is not one of them. My training in understanding conservatives had me thinking differently on this election, than most other people I knew. I needed to encourage others to take him seriously, as well. So, I took seriously his chances of winning.
How serious, you ask? I bet real money on it. I did NOT WANT him to win. But, I predicted this might happen, anyway!
A table of my bets is below. Forum regulars might recognize one of the betting partners:
| Betting Partner | Amount Bet | Win Status | Collection Status | Worth It If I Had Lost? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anonymous Colleague | $100 | Won, presumably | Collected | Yes: Got lots of entertainment out of it! |
| The Central Scrutinizer | $100 | Pending Electoral College Vote | Awaiting Electoral College Vote | Eh... |
| Spiro Condos | $1.00 | Won, presumably | Collected in front the audience at SkeptiCamp | Meh... |
| Total | $201.00 | Won, presumably | $101 Collected so far | Mostly, yes, it would be. |
My efforts, obviously, were in vain. But, I am only one person, with not even 200 Facebook friends nor Twitter followers. If MORE liberal-minded people, including the Democratic candidates, had read the books I had read, and seen the things I had seen, perhaps this could have been avoided. THAT is why this matters!!
(By the way, the money I collect from these bets will go to charities that will help fight Trump. And,
if the electoral college happens to "go faithless" and reverse the vote, then that means I lost the bets and will need to pay out accordingly. However, I would be OKAY with that!)
Summary and Future Discussion
What you just read was adapted from my original presentation notes. But, there is one presentation that covers these concepts better than I ever could. Johnathan Haidt's TED Talk:
http://ift.tt/1vL1YqV
The idea for my original presentation was to open with a few memes from liberal social media sites, and ask how everyone felt about each one: Were they "fair" or not. Then, after explaining some of this stuff, I would display them again, to see if anyone changed their minds. I did not have time to do that, but perhaps in another post of this thread, I will go into the examples I had chosen.
Also for another future post, I want to talk about how these ideas tie into other books I had read, from authors such as Carol Tavris and Steven Pinker, etc.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2gsAPXT
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