Comment by mike_hearn
3 days ago
I'm struggling to understand this article. I think it's for a couple of reasons:
1. The capitalism graph seems OK but the climate change graph doesn't look right. I've never heard anyone argue that "resilient communities" automatically lead to "policy changes". What does that mean? If you have a resilient community already, why would you need to change anything? It seems to suggest that people with this belief system would end up in an infinite loop of wanting to change policies even when the original motivating problem is solved, which sounds like a very uncharitable view of climate activists.
2. After setting up this very abstract argument, the author ends by claiming, "The evidence, and the argument of this post, suggest [truth doesn't determine what people believe]: structure, coherence, and emotional resonance are far more important for the persistence and spread of beliefs". But he hasn't supplied any arguments. He outlined an abstract theoretical model, but it makes no testable predictions and he doesn't try to prove it's correct. Then he claims there are no real debates in the west about climate change, vaccines, or race, it's all driven by the evil Ruskies "creating social chaos". This claim isn't linked in any way to the first part with the graphs.
I've written about this belief twice in the past.
https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-ii-bots-that-are-n...
https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f...
It's all based on a bunch of academic papers that don't replicate and which use pseudo-scientific methodologies. They misuse ML in ways that generate noise, identify random people as "Russian bots", conclude that "Russian bots" support every possible opinion simultaneously and from there assume there must be some nefarious psychological strategy behind it. In reality they're just doing bad social science and casting the results through the prism of their ideological biases. It works because social science is full of people who are easily impressed by maths they don't understand, and who are surrounded by people with identical ideologies to themselves (often extreme ones). So there's nobody to give them a reality check. Eventually people who understand computer science come along and write a rebuttal, but academia is a closed system so they just ignore it and keep pumping journalists/politicians full of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
Given that, it's kind of ironic that the author is writing about the difficulty of changing people's minds with truth.
> graph seems OK but
The point of the argument is agnostic to the contents and structure of the graphs. They are only there to illustrate that a) there exists a conflict; b) both sides of this conflict have a graph; c) even though these graphs inform positions on the same policy, they are composed of completely unrelated ideas.
> But he hasn't supplied any arguments. He outlined an abstract theoretical model, but it makes no testable predictions and he doesn't try to prove it's correct.
You're meant, I think, to find the argument intuitively persuasive. It's easy to map the model's concept onto one's own beliefs, at least if you consider yourself to be rational (and most people do, even if they end up believing absurdities).
I think there is a testable prediction: if you just go in guns blazing to a "culture war" argument and try to convince people of your viewpoint, you are not going to make any progress. Further, in order to even challenge individual beliefs, you will have to understand how they relate to the rest of the other side's memeplex.
> Then he claims there are no real debates in the west about climate change, vaccines, or race, it's all driven by the evil Ruskies "creating social chaos". This claim isn't linked in any way to the first part with the graphs.
Blaming Russia for this is indeed very much out of pocket, and an example of the kind of culture warring that the article seems to want to discourage. However, there is ample evidence of the existence of the groups cited (granted there are others from other countries as well), even if they can't really explain more than a small part of the problem — at least directly. I think it's fair to say that a small number of agitators can produce large amounts of social tension, if they hit just the right talking points (qv. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/).
More importantly, I'd say the dearth of "real debate" is abundantly clear from looking at pretty much any social media. Even on sites that allow users to take either side of an issue, even on the subset of those where one side isn't clearly being continually persecuted and driven off, you find very heavy siloing of each side into its own echo chamber.
> even though these graphs inform positions on the same policy, they are composed of completely unrelated ideas
I'm still confused :( The two graphs shown at the start aren't two sides of the same issue, they're two different issues.
> I think there is a testable prediction: if you just go in guns blazing to a "culture war" argument and try to convince people of your viewpoint, you are not going to make any progress.
I think that was the observation that his theory is trying to explain, not a novel prediction of it. The theory would have to make a testable prediction that isn't just the original phenomenon existing.
The Slate Star Codex article is fun but it's a fictional story. It doesn't let us say anything about reality.
From the responses elsewhere in this thread the author of TFA (@staph here) sounds like a very agreeable & articulate person, but I can't shake off the feeling he's a post-Soviet plant attacking the very spirit of Western Civilization. Understating his intellect just like a mob boss.
A sign of actual good faith would be to provide a compelling (alternative) reasoning structure for climate change activists. Not a strawman graph*.
As you know the post Soviets need to believe in growth. They can't even get to solar without climate change! Therefore, anything to divide the opposition can only help the cause.
*A subgraph "potatoes -> vodka -> biofuels" would only be satire but quite uplifting to all involved.. and almost provides the prediction you are looking for