"My analysis begins with a remarkable essay [by] Jonathan Rauch [who] pointed out that every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real. In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge. This ecosystem, Rauch wrote, operates as a funnel. It allows a wide volume of ideas to get floated, but only a narrow group of ideas survive collective scrutiny. 'We let alt-truth talk,' Rauch said, 'but we don’t let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review, set the research agenda, dominate the front pages, give expert testimony or dictate the flow of public dollars.'... [M]illions of people have come to detest those who populate the epistemic regime, who are so distant, who appear to have it so easy, who have such different values, who can be so condescending.... [Trump] and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime."
From
"The Rotting of the Republican Mind/When one party becomes detached from reality" by David Brooks (NYT). Brooks goes on to blame distrust of experts and anxiety about social and economic conditions, but never explains why this would happen on the right but not the left, nor does he attempt to demonstrate that the problem does in fact belong to the right and not the left. That is, ironically, he himself does not follow "a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge"!
And it's so ugly to speak of "rotting" minds. You'd better be sure there's no rot in your own before you express that kind of emotive contempt and disgust. What makes you so sure you and your friends constitute an epistemic regime that ought to be deferred to by the people you obviously regard as deplorable? It's right there in the open. And you assume that the non-elite people of the left are already in full deference mode. Why?!
Posts
212 comments:
1 – 200 of 212 Newer› Newest»Glory hole enthusiast David Brooks.
We distrust the so-called experts because we've watched expertise be replaced with credentialism, hypocrisy, failing upwards, and an insufferable belief that expertise in one area makes one qualified to speak in other areas.
Every time you post some meanspiritied bullshit that David Brooks urped up I think 'does that guy say anything worth listening to?' Then I go back to not thinking about him until the next time you mention him.
I appreciate you keeping your ear to the ground and reporting what kind of nonsense is floating around out there that the rest of us get the luxury of ignoring.
Didn't he write a book or two advising readers on how to be a good person? Does that include speaking dishonestly and disparagingly about others? I forget.
After watching some of the the Leah Remini Scientology series, it is clear that you cannot directly confront cult members. They just become more strongly bonded to the cult as will no doubt become evident in this comments thread.
And they wonder why we lost trust in the media, and of the establishment elites??? They spew hate at us, and then want us to sit down and shut up??? This is NOT going to end well for ANY of them.....
Brooks is ranting on street corners again? Someone should take him home.
Who gives the slightest fuck what david brooks or the nyt think?
It's like we completely forgot about Fire Doesn't Melt Steel and the tacit acceptance that the left gave that and "Bush Stole Florida."
The Left has been just as "corrupted" by the right.
Howard said...
After watching some of the the Leah Remini Scientology series, it is clear that you cannot directly confront cult members. They just become more strongly bonded to the cult as will no doubt become evident in this comments thread.
11/29/20, 9:12 AM
Exactly...YOU are all walking in lock step with your hate spewing against ordinary Americans you find disgusting.....YOU are the cult you try to tell everyone else they are in...
Even without going back to Bush, with Trump, there are people still waiting for the pee tape to be released and are convinced Carter Page and Tulsi Gabbard are secret Russian Assets.
An Expert is someone I agree with. Those I don't agree with are "detached from reality." You can believe pretty much anything, and feel comfortable doing so, with that kind of proof system.
AA, you are a treasure. Great insight, great analysis.
Howard, of course, is reduced to the ad hominem.
"this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge."
In other words, no one who creates anything of value.
Parasites.
Leeches.
Ticks.
I am Laslo.
How is that "unity" thing working for you? I don't know who will be in the Oval Office on January 21st, but either way I expect 2021 to be more volatile than 2020 has been. I expect the people who voted for Biden because they wanted a return to calm are going to be sorely disappointed. The pushback against the coronavirus restrictions has already started. Cancelling Thanksgiving might have been a bridge too far. If it's Biden, the right will have legitimacy to their claim "Not my President" the left never had. The left won't accept Biden cheated, or care that he did if they do believe it, if it's Trump. Someone will fire on Fort Sumter.
"Brooks goes on to blame distrust of experts and anxiety about social and economic conditions, but never explains why this would happen on the right but not the left, nor does he attempt to demonstrate that the problem does in fact belong to the right and not the left."
Well, no. Because he's David Brooks. If he wanted to talk about the same thing happening on the left, he wouldn't have to look any further than the 1619 Project, the trans "rights" lunacy or CRT. But I imagine he knows pointing to any of that would be the end of his NYT gig. It's a lot easier to screech hysterically about orange bogeymen while positioning yourself as a reasonable conservative. Trump's defeat has got to be about the worst thing to happen to David Brooks.
"I am an expert, you are uncredentialed, he is detached from reality."
We're always back to deplorable.
Brooks is a corruption excusing "his side" crank.
Our lying rotting eyes
Quad erat demonstratium
Tell it to Bret Weinstein, Mr. Brooks.
Imagine how stupid one would have to be to write and believe this part of this argument:
"...decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists..."
This person thinks that system is decentralized?
I do not believe the above snippet can be squared with:
"...we don’t let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review, set the research agenda, dominate the front pages, give expert testimony or dictate the flow of public dollars..."
How can "we do not let" be squared with "decentralized" unless the author is full of shot?
NARRATOR VOICE:
The author is full of shit.
"but never explains why this would happen on the right but not the left, nor does he attempt to demonstrate that the problem does in fact belong to the right and not the left."
Because those of us on the right politically are also on the right of the Bell Curve?
I'm going to make this easy for the David Brooks of the world. It is because we see the evidence of our senses.
We live outside the Washington/NY bubble. We read everything, not just those articles that pass the muster of the censors at the NYT, WaPo, Twitter, Facebook, Google, or anyone else. We do not attend cocktail parties where only those who are nodding in agreement with us are allowed to speak. We do not attend the same schools. We do not live in the same neighborhoods.
We get around. We know what you do not. And we no longer depend on you, your articles, or your opinions.
"Fake but accurate," Climategate, college admissions scams, the reproducibility crisis in "science", #metoo........
It is depressing how individuals like Brooks and apparently Howard can not see the "epistemic regime" had no clothes.
@ Matthew S. ...
"Even without going back to Bush, with Trump, there are people still waiting for the pee tape to be released and are convinced Carter Page and Tulsi Gabbard are secret Russian Assets."
Jill Stein, too. Russian agent.
A top democrat figure made those accusations.
HILLARY CLINTON(D)
Gas-lighting the rot. Each day we can count on a new chapter from the corrupt left.
They just become more strongly bonded to the cult as will no doubt become evident in this comments thread.
Yes. I have wondered a bit about you, Howard. You seem smart enough to understand vote fraud. Inga and lefty Mark and gadfly seem robots.
"...shared system..."
"...we don’t let..."
This person is a bad writer.
We all know that the Biden family used Joe's VP status to stuff Biden family coffers.
Not a single curious word from Brooks on that front.
Self awareness is rare on the left. Such is life in the hive.
The elite, who produce nothing, have a centralized evil in common. The desire to control everyone else. The only rules they follow, is to make sure they all get to stay in the Ivory Tower. David Brooks is among the worst of them. Remember the op-ed on his lunch guest being confused and intimidated by a sandwich menu? He’s also an asshole.
Sounds like Brooks is ready for another of his anthropological/sociological visits to untamed Home Depot.
David Brooks is simply a Mandarin defending the Mandarin class.
Davy Brooks and the NYT: A pairing made in Hell.
Who are you going to believe? The NYT or your own lying eyes?
Anyone who marries someone who converts to his religion and who literally changes her first name to fit into his faith, and then later finds TruE lOvE with a cute employee 25 years younger than he, is suspect as a flaming asshole. Just sayin'.
I'm waiting for the election review process to finish, Mike. Until then, I refuse to waist time on anxiety producing rumors and theories.
Isn't this the dude who made his wife convert to Judaism, bear his kids and divorced her for a hot young assistant?
[M]illions of people have come to detest those who populate the epistemic regime, who are so distant, who appear to have it so easy, who have such different values, who can be so condescending.... [My emphasis.]
They only appear to have it easy? Can any of them use a band saw without losing all or part of a thumb? Have any of them ever changed their own oil? Have any of them ever had to meet a payroll? Have any of them put up a roof in the summer? For that matter have they ever worked anywhere that wasn’t air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter?
But he is right about the different values — how many of them contributed to food banks this year or any previous years or bought toys for the Toys for Tots box at their local eatery? Do they even eat anyplace that would put out a Toys for Tots box? And he is way right about the condescending. We are condescended to by our inferiors.
usty Winds said...
The elite, who produce nothing, have a centralized evil in common.
This corresponds to the left asserting that 70% of the GDP comes from blue areas, like NYC and SF. In fact, the word "product" would need to be replaced by "Money." Those places create ideas and entertainment like Facebook. I use Facebook to exchange kid photos with relatives. I also belong to dog groups.
The billionaire class is mostly engaged in money shuffling. They make nothing.
The rotting minds Brooks speaks of are people of courage, not afraid to be skipped over on an invitation list for kiss ass cocktail parties. We see voter fraud and call it out. We see mass manipulation through COVID and call is out. We know climate change is a hoax. We know many powerful elites in Brooks’ world are sick pedophiles. We know the NYTs is a global propaganda rag.
We also know, through the acceptance of our own sins, and the salvation given through Jesus Christ, that evil exists in the world. It became more powerful and apparent in 2020. The collective evil of elite centralized control. The kind Mr. Brooks likes the most.
Blogger Howard said...
I'm waiting for the election review process to finish, Mike. Until then, I refuse to waist time on anxiety producing rumors and theories.
I do the same, Howard but my waist has shrunk. I've lost 30 pounds since July.
@Gunner, why yes it is! But the epistemic regime says that’s okay and you’re Alt-truth to think otherwise.
Sweet Jesus. Systemic racism, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, silence is violence, cis gender—those are the concepts that survived elite scrutiny and made it through the funnel? Some funnel!
@Dr. Michael K, well done, sir!
With all of the censorship coming exclusivity from the left (Google, facelift, etc..)
and the one-sided non-curious, all-narrative-all-the-time gaslight Democrat party media - Mainstream/deluxe + The AM and PM TEEVEE-Hollywood shows... How did Trump get a single vote?
how exactly to you get to this supposed ROT?
The real Rot is censorship and vote fraud.
Have to agree with Pants. “Experts” who cheat on their spouses or dump their families for a new hot mate, don’t earn my trust that their judgement or work in other areas aren’t similarity polluted with their short-term passions and abject self interests. If they’ll lie to the people closest to them, what confidence should I have that they won’t lie to me?
All that wisdom and knowledge and standards have been poured through a very narrow lefty funnel into David Brooks skull. And with all that wisdom and knowledge he learned that the correct pant crease is proof that the wearer of those pants is truly Presidential Timber!
Yeah, that's the sort of information that is vital for a columnist at the New York Times.
I think I'll pass on absorbing any of that sort of knowledge.
Misleading into to this post. Brooks rejects others' statement that the internet corrupts people on the right more than the left. But he is looking for an explanation for why so many on the right believe things he and I think are whacky: that fraud determined the outcome of the election, that climate change is not a preventable danger, and that the infectious disease experts should be ignored on preventing the spread of covid 19.
Intro
>>"We let alt-truth talk"<<
No "you" don't, you arrogant, fascist assholes.
Nature, with some help from the Founding Fathers, lets alt-truth talk.
Glad to hear it Doc. I hope you are making progress from the lobectomy. Everything in life is easier when you are slender. The challenge is to keep it off.
It would help Brooks' argument if the "epistemic regime" had a better track record for being right about stuff. See the "replication crisis" in the scientific literature, for example, never mind the more subjective questions of politics and social policy.
I have noticed that it is common for bourgeois to believe bourgeois values are normative. They literally can't see their own class biases and prejudices.
So to people like brooks, people with other values are not just different, they are objectively wrong.
The opposite of ROT is Hunter Biden.
That boy has class.
blame distrust of experts and anxiety about social and economic conditions, but never explains why this would happen on the right but not the left
because, it ALREADY happened to the left, back in the '60's; remember?
distrust of
experts___ NEVER TRUST ANYONE OVER 30! Johnson is LYING TO US!!
and anxiety about social___ suburbia is HORRIBLE! we need to move to Communes!
and economic conditions____ Capitalism is EVIL! Don't work for THE MAN!!
A rotting mind is one that can't comprehend and appreciate what a brilliant guy David Brooks really is.
It's true, Readering, I do believe that fraud determined the outcome of the election. I thank you for calling me whacky rather than rotting. I don't mind being whacky. If we could all get to the point where the other side is not evil or deplorable, but eccentric or misguided we'll survive.
Readering writes: “ But he is looking for an explanation for why so many on the right believe things he and I think are whacky...”
I don’t believe your statement at all. I don’t believe you’re looking for any such thing and I don’t believe Brooks is either. That’s the other part you don’t get. We can read through your unwillingness to honestly engage our thoughts and take them seriously enough to consider them. And the reason we know this is because we see a substantial number who espouse your so-called open world view, preemptively condemning anyone for even *considering* our thoughts and views.
"You must trust the experts".... "You must trust the experts"
Who are these experts? Don't ask. Blind faith.
David Brooks is part of the 'Authentic Fake' class. Approved, yet fake. Not a go-to for accurate information. Not representative of any group aside from his cocktail party associates.
I've thought for a few years now that what we are in is a disruption of the "intellectuals". Those Murray Rothbard point out are the persuaders of the state's legitimacy or at least better than the alternatives in his 'The Anatomy of the State'. For their "marketing" they are provided sinecures in academia, think-tanks, media column and guest spots, etc. Not all promote the current faction, but wax and wane in a democracy. The "chattering" class. Up until the blogging started, the mainstream media/publishing controlled and throttled as gatekeepers. The journalist/columnist came to think of themselves at the opinion-molders. Academics were dependent upon the journalist to get mass exposure of their ideas, the "popular press" book being frowned upon, at least for the junior tenured professor.
Then along came the internet with blogging and direct access by academics, lawyers, and others to the masses. Journalists were exposed within hours of writing poorly informed pieces by experts in engineering, those working in the field. Social media accelerated these exposures with each iteration further undermining the media's "intellectual gatekeeper" status. Not to mention, exposing so many academics, columnists, etc. for their chattering opinions devoid of thought. Not a day goes by now without some professors of -studies or even more legit fields posting something that must cause the professors with actual disciplined intellects to shake their heads.
The came Donald Trump. All the "intellectuals" Left and Right, all the journalists allied themselves to deny him legitimacy and to declare any alternative was better. But to no avail. Some started breaking ranks as accomplishments exposed their chattering, but most doubled down. They seeded their acolytes in social media companies to institute censorship of the competing idea as "disputed" so therefore cannot be spoken. Note who is lamenting the questioning of institutions built up over generations to control the narratives.
Why does the Right view "experts" with skepticism? Well, because of experience, and daily exposure to reality. Why is this not on the Left (as much)? Because devotion to the faith is the only way to gain a placement, a sinecure. Heretics will not be tolerated in "polite" society.
Epistemic closure! Epistemic closure!
I am not here for all of this again.
In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge.
What the heck is this system for finding the truth called? It's not science. Science doesn't care if you are an academic, clergy member, etc.
Brooks statement is about power, not knowledge.
Brooks gives up all pretensions and goes all in for the Leftist Democrats.
I won’t go past the paywall to dumpster dive in the NYT, but I do wonder how Republican mind rot is reflected. I’m an Independent so I have no inside knowledge. Is it their commitment to the Constitution? Is it the belief that illegal immigration is not only unlawful, but harmful and unfair? Is it suspicion of Communist China, the source of Covid, exploiter of American trade and wellspring of one third of the world pollution? Or maybe it’s their belief in God and Judeo-Christian morality. After all, Marx and Stalin also claimed religious believers were addled.
Does he include Never Trumpers and LLRs like Chuck Channeling Schumer? Are Trumpers his focus? Regardless, somehow the idea that it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are detached from reality seems like, well, nuts.
I’m on the right politically and with most of my news sources. And the left is full of shit and doesn’t hold their own accountable.
But right wing websites went absolutely nuts the past few years, generally speaking.
Both “wings” are stupid.
Readering,
There is actually a real sense in which "climate change is not a preventable danger". To get to negative carbon emissions would require replacing all fossil fuel production of energy. Right now, that alternative is so much more costly that it would produce a knock on westerners' standard of living and a virtual consignment of the non-affluent to perpetual second-class status. That is, thankfully, a political non-starter.
Read the comments on this blog. Need I say more?
Dunning Kroger requires people to shop for elites at their favorite childhood stores. The algorithms cement these preferences. Everyone thinks they are on a Heroes journey as Jordan Peterson explained in Maps of Meaning. People forget that these heroic sojourns udderly fail.
Readering said...
Misleading into to this post. Brooks rejects others' statement that the internet corrupts people on the right more than the left. But he is looking for an explanation for why so many on the right believe things he and I think are whacky: that fraud determined the outcome of the election, that climate change is not a preventable danger, and that the infectious disease experts should be ignored on preventing the spread of covid 19.
You are in a situation where you have two people.
One of them sees everything the media puts out.
The other person sees everything the media puts out and a lot of other information put out by people with actual acumen in those fields.
Which person is more likely to have a better idea of what is going on and which one believes "whacky" stuff?
Blogger Howard said...
“After watching some of the the Leah Remini Scientology series, it is clear that you cannot directly confront cult members. They just become more strongly bonded to the cult as will no doubt become evident in this comments thread.”
Once again Howard provides conclusive evidence of his passion for projection, his total lack of self awareness and his inability to distinguish between conservatism and the identity politics of the left/Democrats.
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
Anyone who marries someone who converts to his religion and who literally changes her first name to fit into his faith, and then later finds TruE lOvE with a cute employee 25 years younger than he, is suspect as a flaming asshole.
not surprising that someone like that would support someone who married his babysitter
(who was currently married to his Biggest campaign supporter)
Shorter Brooks:
'Stop trolling us, deplorable, and obey.'
The only point of the article is to make leftys feel good. It's just a Sunday morning jerk-off.
It's obvious that the internet amplifies misinformation and conspiracy theories. But everyone is exposed to this equally. To assume that the other side is susceptible to this, and your side isn't, is also a type of conspiracy theory.
an explanation for why so many on the right believe things he and I think are whacky: that fraud determined the outcome of the election, that climate change is not a preventable danger, and that the infectious disease experts should be ignored on preventing the spread of covid 19.
Whacky is a belief in "Global Warming/Climate Change" when we have historical records of such things as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, from which we emerged in 1850 to 1950. The election fraud, I believe, is well known to you but the narrative must be maintained. Infectious Disease experts number around 50,000, best guess. The opinions are all over the place. I assume you want the government "experts" to rule but they have also been all over the place.
You know what I think is really whacky? This war on "fossil fuel" which shows how lacking in real science the left is. Do you know where petrochemicals come from ? Do you know where electricity comes from ?
"a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge ..."
The statement is obviously false regarding academics, who increasingly insist that all truth claims are(and can be) nothing more than claims to power. And thus increasingly insist that what must be accepted as true depends almost entirely on the identity of the speaker, and not so much on any objective evidence (which in any case is presumed not to exist) supporting the assertions. Does he really think that rational argument is to be found here?
"Clergy" covers a great deal of territory, yet it seems obvious that knowledge based on a particular faith tradition is often not all that portable outside that trandition. Although I suppose what Brooks means by "clergy" is more likely to be an Episcopalian priest who abandoned faith decades ago, and is now primarily motivated by today's trendy politics. Not that similar clerics can't be found in other denominations, of course.
Teachers? Yes, there are a few good ones left, yet the dominant zeitgeist in schools of education trends far more toward delivering Social Justice even when that means sacrificing notions of academic merit, or even the value (or existence of) objective evidence favoring some worldviews over others.
As for "jouranlists," are there any still to be found at outlets like the New York Times? And if so, can they survive there without pretending to accept the fashionable nonsense that has come do dominate the Times newsroom? Or the imperative for political objectives to trump objective reporting?
At root, Brooks is making an argument-from-authority, and not at all an argument to respect reasoned argument. If he were, he'd make an argument wherein be presents plentiful objective, verifiable, reproducible evidence to support his theses.
But he doesn't, does he? It all comes down to "we're the (self-) annointed, we know better than you what's true and what isn't, and therefore all who disagree with us must be knaves (or at least fools)."
And, umm, as for decentralized journalism, the reality is that when a story runs in the New York Times that provides de-facto permission for all of mainstream media to follow. For media may or may not be decentralized in ownership, but all mainstream journalists know that "it ran in the New York Times" provides cover for reporting the same thing in much the same way. Whereas if the NYT did not cover it then you'd best have a very strong argument for doing so. And if your coverage is then in any way outside those "accepted values," no amount of hard, real evidence will save your job.
Run of the mill othering offered with the lofty and lengthy imprimatur of the epistemic elite.
Those of us that question the decisions and directions of the likes of Brooks do so in response to their failures, not because a guy like Trump came along and told us to do so.
I have found in discussions with "moderate" lefty friends that they absolutely refuse to consider just how much Post-Modern ideologies shape their views & especially the views of those further to the Left of them. They see their views as evidence of just some sort of morally obvious "natural" reason, and not a product of an ideology. They also see the Right as driven not by a competing ideology, but by moral failures, primary that of racism. Or, perhaps, the moral failure of racism is the Right's ideology.
The now-common idea of systemic racism complicates the narrative since it's not clear, if all white people are complicit in systemic racism, how they (they're all white) are not as complicit as the Right they despise. The only answer that they seem to come up with is that their knowledge & admission of their complicity in systemic racism makes them better. I then remind them that this reminds me of the "born-again" Christians of my youth, who somehow saw their recognition of the power of God's saving grace as equivalent to the ontological fact that they had indeed been instantly redeemed by it. I then add that between the two of them, the narrative of the Born-Agains makes more sense because 1) they at least admit it's miraculous & 2) it happens at the instigation of an outside agent, i.e. God. The white Lefties don't attribute their wokeness to Divine Agency, so who's giving them a moral pass? Basically, they're giving themselves a moral pass, which strikes everyone else as morally pretty fucking dubious.
I think brooks has proven he's a knave, I thought he was merely a fool, but I gave him too much of the benefit of the doubt,
Mr. Wibble is right
All the crannies and all the nooks
It’s David Brooks!
Oil riggers, welders and cooks
It’s David Brooks!
He knows ‘tech’ sites like Pinterest
Better than you know your own self interest
If The NY Times is a barge
something sure smells funny
Brooksy sees who’s in charge
and he’s still writing for money
...and the horse you rode in on.
I came across this on the internet early this morning. I think it explains how Brooks' deep belief in a "non-theocratic" society's "shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge" shapes the character of our politicians:
"Joe Biden went from stealing someone's wife, to stealing speeches, to stealing money, to stealing an election. He has really grown as a politician."
the journolist, the rizzotto tray network, they all operate from the same premises,
that fraud determined the outcome of the election,
It did.
that climate change is not a preventable danger,
That anthropogenic global warming has not been deposited in the trash can of history and buried a quarter mile deep in a land fill is a total indictment of high school and college science and math teachers.
and that the infectious disease experts should be ignored on preventing the spread of covid 19
All they have to do is make a prediction that comes true. Then we can believe them.
Brooks doesn't know anyone who didn't vote for Pauline Kael.
Or Pauline Ryan.
Blogger jim said...
“Read the comments on this blog. Need I say more?”
Yes, you do. Otherwise you appear incapable of making your point - whatever it is.
There's no way one can honestly address the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories on the Right without first recognising that the supposed epistemic gatekeepers have very conspicuously failed to exclude whacko conspiracy theories from the Left. The Russian collusion nonsense was treated seriously for years by mainstream media and experts, and then the whole narrative collapsed once the Mueller report went public. That's not the start of it, of course -- Trump himself spread Obama birther nonsense before he became president. But Dan Rather spread fake news about Bush II before that.
Conspiracy theories didn't really get supercharged until Trump, and the gleeful receptiveness of the media and academe to the most absurd anti-Trump conspiracy theories is an essential part of why the Right, in particular, has recoiled from mainstream and official sources of information -- those sources have become too obviously corrupted by partisan bias. Stuff like the polling industry and the media going all in on the idea that the election was going to be a blue wave, landslide for Biden, 10-20 seat gain for Democrats in the House, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham losing their seats etc. only serves to confirm the impression on the Right that the epistemic gatekeepers have become totally detached from reality. In fact, the election was quite close (even if you don't believe Trump won), Graham and Collins were reelected by comfortable margins, and Republicans are the ones gaining seats in the house. And that's just one example of experts doing a facefault into reality. Take the recent peace agreements between Israel and various Arab and muslim countries. The experts all predicted that Israel could only have peace with the Arab world if it first reached a lasting accommodation with the Palestinians. That turned out to be . . . wrong! Just completely wrong. The experts have not had a good run of late.
jim said...
Read the comments on this blog. Need I say more?
1. Biden lost every bellweather county in the nation except one. No president has ever been elected with fewer than 13. The average is 16.
2. The democrats lost every toss up congressional district in the nation. Every single one.
3. No president has ever lost re-election getting this many more votes that the first time they were elected. Or with a 52% approval rating.
Every single place in the country Biden got absolutely demolished except for places where:
1. Democrats controlled the election apparatus from top to bottom.
2. Democrats kicked Republicans out of polling places during counting.
3. Mass Mail in ballots were used.
How much evidence have Democrats voluntarily produced?
How many times have they requested audits of envelop signatures to prove they won?
How many voting machines have they turned over? How much source code have we seen?
Why did Democrats go to court to keep observers from observing ballots being counted?
Who really believes in that this election had no fraud?
Wilbur said...
AA, you are a treasure. Great insight, great analysis.
This is one of those truly great Althouse threads!
Err, I mean, "funnels".
God this is so depressing....
Where are the brave whistleblowers to pave the way to truth-telling in journalism?
Did Al Gore take any actual steps to reduce his own carbon footprint?
Did Al Gore just take steps to reduce other people's carbon footprint?
Is there a single celebrity or politician pushing global warming that has moved themselves out to a cave and forsaken fossil fuels?
Who believes whacky conspiracy theories?
This entire piece is talking about "fantasyland" and is a classic example of politics infecting everything in society. Two examples of why this is a 'Joke Article', "... every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real..." Really, that's not been my experience, and I lived in over 30 countries around the World and most withdraw into fantasyland due to their dismal conditions - they ignore politicos, experts, military, etc. The second example of why this article is a joke - "David Brooks".
Howard said...I'm waiting for the election review process to finish, Mike. Until then, I refuse to waist time on anxiety producing rumors and theories.
I am pretty much in the same place. People should be careful about some of the rumors which are likely to be part of a disinformation campaign.
Focus on fake ballots rather than machines switching votes.
I'm on Medicare now - pretty healthy- don't take any prescriptions and still working. Each month I pay a total of almost $450 for my "free" Medicare coverages [Parts A thru Infinity]. I just called one of those 800 number ads you see this time of year re open enrolment.
Absolutely confusing and mind boggling. This is an example of what our so-called experts have given us. Thanks Obama, Paul Ryan etc.
Caligula said: At root, Brooks is making an argument-from-authority, and not at all an argument to respect reasoned argument. If he were, he'd make an argument wherein be presents plentiful objective, verifiable, reproducible evidence to support his theses.
But he doesn't, does he? It all comes down to "we're the (self-) annointed, we know better than you what's true and what isn't, and therefore all who disagree with us must be knaves (or at least fools)."
It sounds like we are talking about the Deep State here.
Brooks likes to give himself a "Dutch Oven".
Francisco D said...
Focus on fake ballots rather than machines switching votes.
No. You have to focus on the process. The process has to be agreed to and accepted before anyone will accept the results of the process. You can't count votes on machines that are run on closed source code. You can't kick out or hinder the opposing observers.
You just can't do that or the people that lose will not accept the process.
Actual corruption = the elite democrats at the top of the party.
Brooks definition of corruption = people who won't fall in line.
That anthropogenic global warming has not been deposited in the trash can of history and buried a quarter mile deep in a land fill is a total indictment of high school and college science and math teachers.
A sort history lesson for the dullards like readering.
What is it that distresses the pullers-down, these incontinently dim, these education theorists, these veritable mollusks, these…forgive my language…sociologists? An easy question easily answered: They resent superiority. In a country where culture wafts from the ghetto, where expansive intellect is hated, superiority is the gravest sin. It must be dragged down. And is being dragged down.
But while students commit the individual sin of genius or a close approximation thereunto, the school as an institution essays the unpardonable. “TJ is now 71 percent Asian, 20 percent white, 2.4 percent Hispanic, and 1.6 percent black” Oops.
You can see the systemic unfairness.TJ has lots of Asians. But not a single goddam box turtle. Clearly a disparate impact. Justice for box turtles!
We are going to compete with China? Do you know how many Asians China has? But, you see, the purpose of a school is not to teach. No. It is to have the right number of blacks.
News from Governor Blackface's empire.
Short history lesson.
I don’t feel a duty to abandon my own observations and conclusions, and fall in line with a world view that is so chock-full of basic internal contradictions.
The experts tell me that everything started with a Big Bang (a unfathomable release of energy - energy good) and things just evolved to the present verities of plant and animal life through a process of natural selection, which was fundamentally driven by the strong overcoming the weak (power differential and dynamics is a good) and the weak being forced to adapt to grow stronger to survive.
The experts then tell me that the fact that there is even a solar system that contains one planet on which life could exist, is merely a random chance occurrence in the universe of visible mass floating around in the galactic cauldron after the Big Bang (it is all random).
Then the experts tell me that we must fear a relatively minuscule change in thermal energy on our planet (change in energy is bad), and that they are absolutely certain that the solar system is stable enough (now apparently not random) that driving electric cars will save us all, and that the sun won’t burp one day and cook the entire earth in 10 minutes.
The experts tell me that (even though power dynamics drove evolution - that was good) certain kinds of power differentials in America are wrong and should be eradicated (power differentials bad). Then they tell me or imply by action that power differentials are good when it comes to money, education and credential, and should be respected.
Then the experts tell me that if we don’t do something this way or that way or some other way, or if we don’t reduce our carbon footprint, all kinds of terrible stuff will happen. But the experts can’t explain to me what difference does it make anyway - what does terrible even mean - if we all just evolved out of a physical occurrence and the subsequent events of complete random chance.
The modern America “expert” worldview doesn’t fit together very well. It’s incoherent. So I don’t feel the need to buy in.
I have two words for Brooks: Screw You.
"...a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real."
Ideas aren't 'real.' They may be true or false (arguable), but ideas are concepts, notions; they are not real.
“ There is actually a real sense in which "climate change is not a preventable danger". To get to negative carbon emissions would require replacing all fossil fuel production of energy. Right now, that alternative is so much more costly that it would produce a knock on westerners' standard of living and a virtual consignment of the non-affluent to perpetual second-class status. That is, thankfully, a political non-starter.”
We have known for better than a decade that “climate change” is an elaborate, elite enriching, hoax. The emperor wears no clothing, and it was first made public with ClimateGate, where the sausage making was first exposed. Think about it for a minute, why now ‘climate change “? What does that mean? To me, it is an admission that both AGCC and AGCW have been effectively falsified as scientific theories. That leaves Climate Change which, by its very design, is unfalsifiable. It essentially says that if the US and Europe don’t massively cut down on their CO2 emissions, the world is doomed. How? Can’t really say, just that it is sure going to happen. Why are China and India Exempt? Because reasons. (Which, of course, brings up the obvious question of whether there is Chinese money behind the hoax, as there seems to be everywhere, and esp the “election” of China Joe Biden). But if it is not falsifiable, it isn’t real science. Note - if CO2 really was driving up global temperatures, NOAA, one of the agencies making the most money from this hoax, probably wouldn’t be so diligently fudging their intermediate figures every couple years. But if Climate Change is unfalsifiable, it isn’t science. It is religion.
If Biden is inaugurated, and Kerry installed as Climate Czar, what can we expect as a country, in the name of fighting Climate Change? Very likely a deeper recession, as fracking is forced to give way to electric cars, solar panels, and windmills, as this country loses international clout, as we lose our edge as a major petroleum producer. Who benefits? The Chinese, of course. Political insiders who can get on the gravy train of government subsidies. Government bureaucrats, of course. Will the upcoming recession, and esp it’s very likely increased depth, a bug or a feature? I used to think that they just didn’t think these things through very well. Now, I am leaning towards feature.
Let me add that much of the justification for COVID-19 restrictions, as well as the theory that Senile Joe Biden, without campaigning, legitimately won the election, are just as much religion, over science, than is Climate Change (whatever that means this month). And, as we all know, you can’t really debate someone else’s religion.
Readering bleated as “whacky”: “...that fraud determined the outcome of the election, that climate change is not a preventable danger, and that the infectious disease experts should be ignored on preventing the spread of covid 19.
If fraud didn’t determine the outcome of the election, why are the leftmedia and the Democrats refusing to acknowledge hundreds of affidavits and other evidence of fraud and fighting efforts to investigate it and other irregularities? If lefties believe climate change is a preventable danger, why do they support a presidential candidate who promotes enabling China, the nation responsible for one third of the world pollution (and who may well be in the pocket of the ChiComs)? And finally, which infectious disease experts know how to prevent the spread of Covid 19 and why haven’t the actions of Democrat governors (Cuomo, et al.) who profess to be following their advice prevented the spread?
Either it is you and Brooks who are out of touch with reality or you are just full of shit, or both.
Do your actions and your words align?
Trump: Yes.
Biden: No.
Every person's decision making process, their executive functioning, is routed through the emotional centers in the brain. People who have those parts of their brains damaged often not only lose their emotional capacity, but their ability to make a decision.
It is how you filter your emotions and use them that determines how you make decisions. If you say things that do not match your actions your decision making process is taking you down a road that is not healthy.
We all do this.
Iman said...
Who gives the slightest fuck what david brooks or the nyt think?
I'm compiling a list:
1. David Brooks
2. Ann Althouse
3.
Feel free to add-
An interesting post in that I’ve been reading Scott Adam’s “Loserthink.”
Adams began his work career as an engineer, then moved on to create the Dilbert cartoon.
He’s not a Trump supporter although he does admire Trump’s use of persuasion as a political technique.
“Loserthink” addresses the issue of whether we should defer to “experts” at some length. Adams advice is that we shouldn’t. His reasons are very interesting. I recommend this book for this reason alone.
One can believe climate change is a real thing but disagree on what to do. George Will is a good example there. But some comments here make Brooks's point.
Joe Smith said...
"...a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real."
Ideas aren't 'real.' They may be true or false (arguable), but ideas are concepts, notions; they are not real.
And how are they expressed?
Words.
What are words?
You are on a slippery slope my friend.
Adams is a Trump supporter.
Is there a single celebrity or politician pushing global warming that has moved themselves out to a cave and forsaken fossil fuels?
Who believes whacky conspiracy theories?
11/29/20, 10:44 AM
The only one I can think of is Ed Begley Jr.
the people who bought danchencko's bar talk, talk about intellectual corruption, ha,
readering said...
One can believe climate change is a real thing but disagree on what to do. George Will is a good example there. But some comments here make Brooks's point.
What is climate change?
"We get around. We know what you do not. And we no longer depend on you, your articles, or your opinions.
This is an important comment.
How many of these NY or DC elites would be comfortable strolling into a trailer park in South Carolina or a Dollar Store in Kentucky and talking to the people they find there?
I live in an expensive home in an expensive part of the country, but my grandparents lived in a trailer park. I grew up with very little, and can relate perfectly to blue collar folks because my father (and everyone in my family) actually 'worked' for a living.
Can Brooks talk to the trailer-dwellers or the moms and dads buying supplies for a dollar a pop? Can any of the chattering class?
I don't think so.
You know what broke me was gay marriage. I'm 100% in favor of it. I want it to be legal and available.
The main argument for it was that gay marriage has no effect on anyone beyond the couple getting married. But as soon as SCOTUS decided it was a constitutional right, they started suing Christian owned businesses and venues for discrimination if they didn't actively participate in the marriages.
The same "funnels" that argued that gay marriage wouldn't affect those that disagreed with it where the same "funnels" that cheered when "bigots" were forced out of business.
readering said...
But some comments here make Brooks's point.
Is Carter Page a Russian spy?
Is there any evidence that Donald Trump colluded with Russia?
Is Brett Kavanaugh a rapist?
Was Joe Biden on video tape admitting to threatening Ukraine with loss of aid unless they fired a prosecutor that was investigating a company that way paying his son?
What is Brook's point?
Readering says, “ But some comments here make Brooks's point.”
Comments which you decline to address, I note. Only dismissal or diversion.
QED.
Temujin said...
We get around. We know what you do not. And we no longer depend on you, your articles, or your opinions.
Do you think Brooks is as uninformed as Readering?
Is Carlos Slims as uninformed as Brooks?
How much does Joe Biden actually know?
What makes you so sure you and your friends constitute an epistemic regime that ought to be deferred to by the people you obviously regard as deplorable?
Easy answer. Confirmation bias.
Jonathan Rauch: We let alt-truth talk... but we don’t let it:
write textbooks...
A People's History of the United States
receive tenure...
Ibram X. Kendi
bypass peer review...
A Disgrace to the Profession
set the research agenda...
Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law
dominate the front pages...
The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History
give expert testimony...
Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychologist, appears before senators as her own expert witness
or dictate the flow of public dollars.
AOC’s top aide admits Green New Deal about the economy, not climate
That's seven examples, one for each horseshit claim by Rauch, and that David Brooks appears to endorse.
And people wonder why 72 million people voted for Donald Trump. As Peggy Noonan put it (without taking her own insight to heart), we're being condescended to by our inferiors.
remember the supposed reason, why there had to be tarp, the stimulus and obamacare, that medical bills were bankrupting people, that there wasn't enough disposable income that's what they've brought about,
remember a host of parrots said there would be massive cases in red states, yet they are predominantly clustered in a horshoe pattern from virginia to california,
'
I don't see any commenters disputing that such an "epistemic regime" pervades the cultural class that is Brooks' ambiance :
so I will ask proponents of rule of law and cruel neutrality
Q: do similar beings to Brooks inhabit the legal/juridical venues Trump has waded into?
what is the foreboding/advent for Trump's eventual success/failure
Adams is a Trump supporter.
No, he’s not, and he explicitly states that in his books and in his Periscope episodes.
But, you are illustrating a corrupt manner of thinking that Adams discusses at great length in “Loserthink,” which is that any positive statement about any person indicates total support of that person’s beliefs.
You just illustrated a defective manner of thinking that Adams writes and talks about quite brilliantly.
remember the supposed reason, why there had to be tarp, the stimulus and obamacare, that medical bills were bankrupting people, that there wasn't enough disposable income that's what they've brought about,
remember a host of parrots said there would be massive cases in red states, yet they are predominantly clustered in a horshoe pattern from virginia to california,
they tell us the most cost effective treatment for the outbreak is dangerous, but the more expensive one isn't then they tell us it doesn't work, but we have to hold out for the untried vacccine, which might have symptoms similar to the bug itself
'
readering said...
Adams is a Trump supporter.
Do you actually know anything about the subjects that you talk about?
It's to affirm NYT readers' view that they're not the crazy ones. It itself is clickbait for them.
Scott Adams actually says that his true political identity is closer to being a Bernie Bro.
"never explains why this would happen on the right but not the left"
Well, why should he? The point of the epistemic regime is to impose its view of reality on the deplorable Other.
"nor does he attempt to demonstrate that the problem does in fact belong to the right and not the left"
Left hegemony means that only the right has a problem.
"That is, ironically, he himself does not follow "a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge"!"
Except it's not ironic: it's the application of the proper prog epistemic standard, which does not require foolish consistency.
"And it's so ugly to speak of "rotting" minds."
And it's so sentimental to lament it.
"What makes you so sure you and your friends constitute an epistemic regime that ought to be deferred to by the people you obviously regard as deplorable?"
Well, if you are part of the ruling epistemic regime, you are never uncertain.
"And you assume that the non-elite people of the left are already in full deference mode. Why?!"
Well, not really. Our patronizing inferiors don't care if we defer or not.
By "rotting" or "corrupting," Pants-Crease Brooks means "not submitting to the rule of superior folk like me."
"Why won't these inbred redneck freaks of JesusLand realize how intolerant they are?"
I have two degrees but I live and work in the Republican world. Republicans have their own epistemic regime and it is empiricist, not rationalist. The people in my world have to get knowledge right or they can die in an industrial accident. Academia can get it wrong and suffer not at all. However, people suffer when Radical Theory becomes a predominant philosophy and new organizations like BLM and Antifa begin to wreak havoc with approval from the “unrotting” Democratic minds.
Rausch was on Humpty Dumpty today. His idea is that we should all follow "expert opinion."
Apparently, he is secure in the confidence that expert opinion always speaks as one and says what he believes himself. Either he isn't aware that experts disagree and argue with each other and that our public "experts" aren't always experts in the subjects they talk about, or it doesn't concern him.
Left and right get corrupted in different ways. Right now the right is more susceptible to internet rumors, that's true. The vice of the left is assuming that all truth is contained in the official party line.
There's a book called Bobos in Paradise that's a slightly amusing jab at the sort of faux elites who think and act like everyone else who looks to the NYT for lifestyle instruction. I forget the name of the author, though.
“I live in an expensive home in an expensive part of the country, but my grandparents lived in a trailer park. I grew up with very little, and can relate perfectly to blue collar folks because my father (and everyone in my family) actually 'worked' for a living.”
I didn’t. I grew up in a nice house in a nice area, with a nice golf course nearby, and horses in about half the yards, went to a very nice small (very liberal) liberal arts college, got graduate degrees, and now live in an expensive house next door to Scottsdale, AZ, within a mile of where easily more luxury cars are sold in AZ than anywhere else (which, I think, is why we are in PHX, and not Scottsdale - lower taxes on Ferraris, Porsches, etc). But this morning, going out for errands, got in a discussion about Home Depot with the woman behind the counter at the convenience store. I told her that I was going to the one in N Scottsdale, because my usual one doesn’t have the ceiling rack I am looking for (it actually is there (or here, since I am in the parking lot) and after I move some money into my checking account, I will go back in and buy it). She launched into her tale of woe, driving from HD to HD, looking for a specific tool for her husband. Finally found it at Lowe’s. We both agreed - HD is usually better, and cheaper, but check out Lowe’s as a backup. I, of course, told her my story of doing just she had done.
It isn’t really hard. I really enjoy it. I talk to people in all walks of life. All the time. Which is, I think, part of why I voted for Trump, and not Senile Joe. I was blessed in life. With a couple of physically easy, intellectually stimulating, careers. But part of that appreciation comes from having done the mindless backbreaking work, getting fired a couple times, etc.
hombre said...
Yes, you do.
No, I don't.
The thing New York Times readers could use most is a columnist capable of presenting a fair case for Trumpism, populism, conservatism, etc., so that they would be in a position to understand what half of their fellow citizens believe. David Brooks is not that columnist.
"It isn’t really hard. I really enjoy it. I talk to people in all walks of life. All the time."
This just means you aren't an asshole...entitled maybe...but not an asshole.
In my area there are many people of means who achieved it via family or family connections.
Most of them are jerks...
"I expect the people who voted for Biden because they wanted a return to calm are going to be sorely disappointed."
I doubt Biden voters made their choice because they want a "return to calm." I'd say the two strongest impulses were either:
1. Hatred of Trump
2. They were self-deluded enough to think Biden will provide significantly different/better policies or outcomes than Trump.
This latter group will certainly be sorely disappointed.
Is there any person in the world more deluded than Robert Cook?
I mean, I laugh my ass off every time I read one of this commie goofball’s posts.
Robert, let me tell you something... everybody, no matter what aspect of the political system they occupy, loathes your shitty Stalinism.
We like being able to buy stuff in the store, and we don’t want GULAGs. Believe it or not, these ideas unify us.
jim said...
Read the comments on this blog. Need I say more?
****************
Yes, a great deal more. Try making an argument instead of engaging in drive-by snot-flinging.
Glowball Warmening is a thing, obviously.
That's why Michael Mann won his lawsuits.
Howard said...
"Dunning Kroger requires people to shop for elites at their favorite childhood stores. The algorithms cement these preferences. Everyone thinks they are on a Heroes journey as Jordan Peterson explained in Maps of Meaning. People forget that these heroic sojourns udderly fail."
Dunning-Kruger. Which you prove outstandingly nearly every time you post.
Only one side bans people for wrongthink. I think they are the ones who are closing themselves off from the search for truth.
The Left was already already progressive (i.e. monotonic); liberal (i.e. divergent); Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, relativistic, ostensibly "secular" quasi-religious (e.g. "ethical"). Neo-Dezis or Democratic Socialists. The tell-tale hearts beat ever louder. #HateLovesAbortion
Shouting Tom: Given the word-salad that your salad-spinner mind so often produces, I don't know whether to advise you to resume taking your Lithium or to cease taking LSD.
Maybe try both?
true, but as mark steyn puts it, the process is the punishment, ted stevens bob mcdonnell and tom delay, were exonerated but they never regained their office, arthur andersen and conrad back could never put their company back together, (the former was consumed by hsbc, which was protected by james comey and judge gleason)
Michael K: Whacky is a belief in "Global Warming/Climate Change" when we have historical records of such things as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, from which we emerged in 1850 to 1950.
Climate Emergency. Sheesh. Please do try to keep up.
[/sarc]
Speaking of historical records. In Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol I, there are several pages discussing striking climate changes that were well documented in Roman historical records. (Download from the Gutenberg Project, search on "ice".)
Those changes don't show up anywhere in warmenists climate histories, either because their reconstructions incompetent, or because the inability to explain those changes cripple their ability to change whatever changes we are seeing now.
readering said...
One can believe climate change is a real thing but disagree on what to do. George Will is a good example there. But some comments here make Brooks's point.
Here is a tell that climate change isn't a real thing. Everytime you read about warmenists' goals, it is to restrict greenhouse gases so as to limit global warming to 2ºC above pre-industrial.
You do see the problem here, don't you?
They have no fricking idea what the global average temperature would be today, if human activity was still pre-industrial. (And that is aside from the fact that they have scarcely any idea what the pre-industrial global average temperature was, and are never fussed to discuss the error in their guess.)
I was pushed out of the ecosystem Brook’s talks about for believing in the possibility of the Strategic Defense Initiative, of course at the time it was called Reagan’s Stars Wars program. Ironically by a Muslim male teacher—in two different classes.
Anyways, what The Left was arguing at the time was that no maniac could gain power of a country that was sophisticated and/or rich enough to gain access to nuclear power and/or weapons, and that we could control the information, knowledge and spread.
I actually used Iran as an example in my arguments back in the early 80’s...
Brooks ought to read and respond to this before he accuses Republicans of anything:
https://reason.com/podcast/2020/11/27/glenn-greenwald-on-biden-free-speech-and-leaving-the-intercept/
"Though unapologetically progressive, the 53-year-old former lawyer [Glenn Greenwald] never shrinks from fighting with the left. A week before the 2020 election, he quit The Intercept, the online news organization he co-founded in 2014, because, by his own account, it refused to run a story unless he "remove[d] all sections critical of" Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Denouncing what he called "the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality" that led him to be "censored" by his own media outlet, Greenwald railed that "these are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom."
They have no fricking idea what the global average temperature would be today, if human activity was still pre-industrial.
Plus, of course, they have corrupted all the raw data.
Ontologically vacuous, epistemologically fascinated with people’s pant creases — what could be more rotten. But then Brooks has to pay his rent by being the house niggardly “conservative”, who sold his soul to be liked by libs before his death.
Joe Smith said...
"...a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real."
Ideas aren't 'real.' They may be true or false (arguable), but ideas are concepts, notions; they are not real.
***************
Ideas put into action have real consequences.
You should read "The Burden of Bad Ideas" by Heather MacDonald.
"Ideas put into action have real consequences."
Yes...
I guess I should bolster their side of the argument a bit. There was the policy of MAD — mutually assured destruction and it was a belief that rational actors would always rise to power of the states rich enough and sophisticated enough to acquire nuclear arms and would not use them based on a stated policy of matching fire. A huge negative outcome or — fallout— rested on the sanity and/ or rationality of a few people (relatively speaking) even decades into the future.
The system Brooks is a part of—is the problem. Journalists have very little education outside of their specialty and arguments on the internet by them have been reduced on Twitter by trading “gotchas!” over spelling errors, mispronunciations—and grammar problems. It is easier for them to do these cheap types of attacks and their wallets get rewarded for creating the distracting drama. They are the filter and everything is reduced and made smaller. Some people have left the drama and some people have adopted their techniques and are now returning fire to escape their control.
Brooks wrote the following, apparently with no self-awareness whatsoever:
"As Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School points out, [conspiracy theories] provide liberation: If I imagine my foes are completely malevolent, then I can use any tactic I want."
Son of a bitch I made Brooks possessive in a place where I should not have.
Oh well.
Give Brooks a break. Lots of parties to attend right now. Covid 19 restrictions are for the little people.
What is Brook's point?
@Attonasi, Brooks’ point is “Shut up, racist.”
In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge
Including journalists in that list is laughable. It negates the entire argument. As Chennault commented earlier, journalists are not smart. They aren’t even well educated. They’re the least qualified to filter facts for the rest of us.
"In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge."
It's too bad we don't have one of those. Instead we have an inbred group of losers who "think" the same about everything of import.
"This ecosystem, Rauch wrote, operates as a funnel. It allows a wide volume of ideas to get floated, but only a narrow group of ideas survive collective scrutiny"
Yeah, it allows a "large" range, from the left to the lunatic left.
Howard said...
After watching some of the the Leah Remini Scientology series, it is clear that you cannot directly confront cult members. They just become more strongly bonded to the cult as will no doubt become evident in this comments thread.
Yes, Howard, we really appreciate your willingness to "represent" for your cult here.
I predict you will not actually try to defend the intellectual and moral "accomplishments" of those "experts", because you're intelligent enough to know that's utterly indefensible. But you will still cling to them, who all your religious zealotry
Shouting Thomas said...
Is there any person in the world more deluded than Robert Cook?
Actually, Cookie has a couple of valid points. I still wouldn't rule out people voting for Biden because they think it will bring back the calmer world of the 1990's, though.
Speaking of evidence.... Do you remember what Bari Weiss wrote about the NYT?
“ As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.”
Read her letter. She resigned from the NYT because of harassment, and because NYT became an ideological monolith, hermetically closed to any opinions diverging from the hard-left-wing orthodoxy.
https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
"I'd say the two strongest impulses were either:
1. Hatred of Trump
2. They were self-deluded enough to think Biden will provide significantly different/better policies or outcomes than Trump."
Comrade Cook is correct. This comports exactly with what I've heard from friends and family that voted for Biden, though they do not admit to the delusion. One family member sent me an email expressing concern about Biden, her words: "The best we could do?", after having listened to a Biden recorded statement. My reaction, "This is news or a surprise to you?".
My hope is that should Biden actually be sworn in he turns out to be as boring and inconsequential as our host expects.
Blogger Robert Cook said...
I doubt Biden voters made their choice because they want a "return to calm." I'd say the two strongest impulses were either:
1. Hatred of Trump
I don’t believe there is another impulse.
"My hope is that should Biden actually be sworn in he turns out to be as boring and inconsequential as our host expects."
Our host didn't participate in the election. She can't complain either way.
Many don't trust the "experts" because they are so sure they are right and are so often wrong.
In medieval Europe bloodletting was used to treat many illnesses including plague. My guess is that 100 years from now people will be as shocked to hear that we thought wearing a mask will stop Covid as we are now shock to think that doctors drained blood from a patient to cure them of the plague.
The question I would ask family who voted for Biden.
You want to align yourselves with the elites, the big techs, the mainstream media, globalists, and disgusting people like David Brooks?
If so, I don’t think I care much for you.
Fred Hayek aptly characterized intellectuals, these “decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others” as “ professional secondhand dealer in ideas.” Here is what he says:
“ Even though [the knowledge of intellectuals] may be often superficial, and their intelligence limited, this does not alter the fact that it is their judgment which mainly determines the views on which society will act in the not too distant future. It is no exaggeration to say that once the more active part of the intellectuals have been converted to a set of beliefs, the process by which these become generally accepted is almost automatic and irresistible. They are the organs which modern society has developed for spreading knowledge and ideas, and it is their convictions and opinions which operate as the sieve through which all new conceptions must pass before they can reach the masses.”
Thomas Sowell continued this topic with with acute observation:
“ "Those whose careers are built on the creation and dissemination of ideas — the intellectuals — have played a role in many societies out of all proportion to their numbers. Whether that role has, on balance, made those around them better off or worse off is one of the key questions of our times.
The quick answer is that intellectuals have done both. But certainly, during the 20th century, it is hard to escape the conclusion that intellectuals have on balance made the world a worse and more dangerous place. Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the 20th century was without his supporters, admirers, or apologists among the leading intellectuals — not only within his own country, but in foreign democracies, where intellectuals were free to say whatever they wanted.
...intellectuals are people whose end products are intangible ideas, and they are usually judged by whether those ideas sound good to other intellectuals or resonate with the public. Whether their ideas turn out to work — whether they make life better or worse for others — is another question entirely."
Bruce Hayden, what are you putting in your new ceiling rack? Extra ceilings?
Adams has interesting insights many times. Thinking SCOTUS' main mission is to protect us from the truth is not one of his best.
Big Mike said...
What is Brook's point?
@Attonasi, Brooks’ point is “Shut up, racist.”
Is that his point?
Does Brooks's flawed point have a simple easily unmissable reason?
Or does it have a full range of emotional triggers just like any other or our brain's cognitive emanations?
Does it serve any good cause to do to Brooks what Brooks does to us?
Readering said...
But he is looking for an explanation for why so many on the right believe things he and I think are whacky: that fraud determined the outcome of the election, that climate change is not a preventable danger, and that the infectious disease experts should be ignored on preventing the spread of covid
1:
A: Because Vote counters don't stop counting the night of the election, unless they're waiting to find out how many votes they have to make up to steal the election
B: Because vote counters don't fight to keep poll watchers where they can't actually watch what the poll workers are doing, unless the poll workers are doing something illegal
2: Because the people pushing the "climate change" fantasy keep on making predictions that turn out to be wrong (see the 18 year warming hiatus). Anyone who understand anything about science understands that if your predictions are wrong, so is your hypothesis
3:
A: Because the "infectious disease experts" only care about the "infectious disease" part, not about the "destroying the economy leads to destroying lives, suicide, and Mayne other deaths". Preventing 100k Covid deaths is not worth putting 10 million people out of work for 3 years.
B: Because those "infectious disease experts" had a great deal of problem with people holding "lockdown protests", but then had no problem at all with the George Floyd protests.
Which means ALL their statements come from a place of personal political desire, not their "expertise".
And I'm not going to privilege someone else's person political desires over my own
Whenever David Brooks says something, I assume the opposite is true. His arguments are useful in that way.
Does it serve any good cause to do to Brooks what Brooks does to us?
Is that what you got out my remark? Humor is lost on you. And, no, this comment is not meant sarcastically.
“Bruce Hayden, what are you putting in your new ceiling rack? Extra ceilings?”
Actual name for it is: “HyLoft 60 in. W x 45 in. D Adjustable Height Garage Ceiling Mount Storage Unit”. But found it on the HD web site looking for “ceiling rack”. Four corners are bolted to studs in the ceiling, and the 60”x45” “rack” can hang down maybe 25”-45”. We have ten foot ceilings, so drop it all the way down, and can still walk under it. Had a smaller one at the old house, and left it. Last week, the SIL helped install one in the garage. Once we figured it out, it went quickly. But then I filled it up almost as quickly. So I was buying another one, which I figure I can do myself. You just need to drill eight pilot holes, then put eight bolts into those holes, with an impact driver. And then bolt it together.
I don't believe a single word of what Althouse reads in the New York Times.
Yes, all the wise heads that Rauch describes have broad, wide-ranging discussions as to what is epistemic truth. They run the gamut from A to B.
And the despise anyone who is interested in knowing about C to Z.
The point at which Brooks begins to project;
"For those in low status groups, they provide a sense of superiority: I possess important information most people do not have."
Matt Sablan said...
"It's like we completely forgot about Fire Doesn't Melt Steel..."
There are fires that melt steel. But they don't burn jet fuel and office furnishings.
"What to do? You can’t argue people out of paranoia. If you try to point out factual errors, you only entrench false belief."
It seems like one of those problems that take care of themselves. The tiny fraction of Republicans who survive attempting to live without a rag tied around our heads will be drowned when the seas cover the remote mountains we live in, while the Coastal elites simply move up another floor or two in their luxurious skyscrapers. Presumably that's why Dave isn't concerned about all the coal his Chi-Com masters are burning.
Here is an easy way to tell which side has a rotting mind: do they say any damned thing no matter how absurd (e.g., Trump impeachment nonsense), contradict themselves (defund the police but the police will come make sure you don't have too many at thanksgiving), make grand plans that are impossible (green nude eel looking at you), panic at nothing, lie lie lie, and talk about destroying capitalism as if that is a plan that can work? Brooks has no evidence the right fits his ideas at all. He is, as freudians used to say, projecting.
Readering said...
"... he is looking for an explanation for why so many on the right believe things he and I think are whacky: that fraud determined the outcome of the election, that climate change is not a preventable danger, and that the infectious disease experts should be ignored on preventing the spread of covid 19."
Try this on, Readering; vote counting stopped simultaneously in five large metro areas with Trump ahead. When it resumed, he was behind. Sounds legit.
The West must shut down our economies to save the World, but the Chi-Coms can continue to increase the amount of coal the burn without causing any problems. Sounds legit.
So that's two for your side. But who said anything about "preventing the spread of covid 19"? We're flattening the curve, remember? Sounds like you've got some mind-rot setting in, Readering. Pour a little bleach in your ears, clear it right up.
Brooks speaks for a news organization that spent four years trying to prove the 2016 election was a fraud and Donald Trump was a Russian agent. And he is worried about 'low status groups' who indulge in conspiracy theories? Wow.
I would defer more often to experts if they weren't so frequently wrong. Or if they didn't exhibit magical thinking. To fight climate change, everyone must give up fossil fuels and, what, become Amish?
Bourgeois Bohemians were people who tried to have it both ways. Sort of like today's NeverTrumpers. The idea is that the NeverTrumpers are the true conservatives, but some of them are working and praying for a Democrat take-over of the Senate. How does that fit together?
"My analysis begins with a remarkable essay [by] Jonathan Rauch [who] pointed out that every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real. In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge. This ecosystem, Rauch wrote, operates as a funnel. It allows a wide volume of ideas to get floated, but only a narrow group of ideas survive collective scrutiny. ..."
These guys want a funnel with a rather narrow spout. It sounds like nostalgia for the Establishment or clerisy of by-gone days. But look at what got through the "funnel" back then: many ideas that we would consider contemptible nowadays. And is it really facts and "reality" we are talking about or just manners? People still argue about who really won the 1960 election. That's more of a real controversy than "Russian collusion" ever was, but whatever the truth was, Nixon was supposed to suck it up and take it, along the same lines that women, minorities, radiation victims, etc. were supposed to.
We let alt-truth talk,' Rauch said, 'but we don’t let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review, set the research agenda, dominate the front pages, give expert testimony or dictate the flow of public dollars.'...
Close. You don't let anyone who challenges leftist dogma participate because that's the only way leftist dogma can survive. Thus you classify people who refuse to pretend American college campuses have the worst incidence of sexual assault of anywhere ever including nations undergoing civil war as sexist rather than recognize your pet project is insanity.
It's interesting people who claim rational thought is white supremacy have a place but those who challenge it are excluded as racists. No doubt this is what leftists support as "inclusive".
A funnel is what they use to feed immobilized geese to produce foie gras.
No thanks, assholes.
What a little tiny prick
Brooks. hah.
why are you wasting your time?
Yeah, what does Brooks know? Let me read AA commenters for what's what!
He really is a guy who's impressed by the crease in a man's pants. Such a man of well-creased pants makes an excellent member of the decentralized ecosystem of agreeable experts. He raises their sartorial standard, but even more, he says to those outside the ecosystem that he, and therefore they, are men to be taken seriously, as seriously as he takes his ironing. I suppose we ought to be grateful his snobbery and contempt are transparent or at least poorly concealed--an artless codger rather than a beguiling artful dodger.
Readering
Yeah, what does Brooks know? Let me read AA commenters for what's what!
As you are reading AA comments, you apparently believe what you wrote.
David Brooks, using Jonathan Rauch as a model of "reasoning," peered out of his limousine window while sipping his latte, and uttered the following:
"[M]illions of people have come to detest those who populate the epistemic regime, who are so distant, who appear to have it so easy, who have such different values, who can be so condescending.... [Trump] and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime."
Hmmmm....Two observations on this clip:
Libs aren't interested in the marketplace of ideas, if they can't monopolize the market and silence ideas they don't agree with or want others to hear. Jack Dorsey, anyone?.
It's easy for The NYT's resident "conservative" David Brooks to mock the "rotting minds" of members of the conservative movement, while ignoring the unbridled feelings of superiority among those on the left. He is emblematic of the distant, condescending elite who would rather sneer at their "lowers" than engage in the dialogue that might lead to understanding. Meathead without the charm.
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