Some day they'll probably have Support Groups for this:

Deleted by your friends? That's life on Facebook now

Somebody actually did a study on tendencies to delete comments, friends, and who uses what privacy settings, by age, gender and other factors (your tax dollars at work?).

Remember I said that some of the homilies people post are actually decorative pictures of homilies. Here's an example of this:



What I like about this one is that those letters in white are actually in the Albertus font used in The Prisoner , which conjures up images of those "Questions are a Burden to others, answers a prison for oneself" and "A still tongue makes a happy life" signs. Be seeing you!

Here's a good one for the "what are they thinking" department?





If he thought we'd want to know about his Facebook problems, wouldn't he also think that we'd want to know what they are? But no, he thought we wanted to know he was having problems, but we didn't care what the problems were. Or how to avoid them ourselves. Just when you think you've seen it all...

Okay, I can't believe I haven't discussed this before. There are a LOT of people on Facebook who do this. Just post reams upon reams of spurious one-sided political thought. The people on my own Friends list who do this are all Left Wing people, but I wouldn't read too much into that. It just means that I personally don't know that many Right Wing cranks, not that there aren't any out there.

The people who do this only very rarely post their own words. Usually, they spam a link from the site of some special interest group advocacy group that's so one-sided that it makes Fox or CNN look balanced. (Sometimes even BSNBC too, which is no small feat). Here are three from one woman who's a teacher, of all things.

Tell Governor Perry: Stop playing politics with women's health!

Tell TransCanada: Stop seizing land for the rejected Keystone XL pipeline!

Tell Congress: Only people are people.

The absence of any argument makes the whole thing come off as more insulting than she probably realizes. They're all in the form of "Here's what you should think, now go tell so-and-so that that's what you do think. Or, maybe she's only trying to mobilize people on her Friends list to action, and assumes everyone agrees with her already, so no argument necessary? That may not be a safe assumption. This woman has 270 friends. Surely some of them need to be persuaded to her point of view.

This is the kind of person that I avoid talking politics with entirely. John Stuart Mill said that people who understood only their own point of view didn't even understand that, and this is a good example. With this kind of person, when I disagree with them, there's no point in saying so. They seem so monolithic that they'd just stare at you and say "You're one of THEM!" And when you agree with them, it's even worse, because if you try to tell them why you agree, they'll just rubber stamp anything you say, without giving it any consideration. Being summarily agreed with bugs me almost as much as being summarily disagreed with. Both mean that the other person isn't really listening.

On the other hand, maybe this person isn't like that. After all, I've never TRIED to take issue with anything she's said (mainly because she hasn't said ANYTHING, only spammed links to other people's words). Maybe I've completely misjudged her. But if I have, it's her fault too. She hasn't exactly invited debate.


PS: Links like this constitute the majority of what this person posts. But yesterday she made a rather telling comment: "the more time I spend here, the more I wonder why."

I don't wonder. How satisfying can it be just spamming links to other people's words, or telling people to sign petitions? If they do, they almost never post to say that they have. An assistant professor would probably prefer to teach than indoctrinate (or am I just reading my own preferences into it?)

I think a lot of folks do fail to understand the full range of political diversity among their friends. Even if you restrict yourself to close friends and family you get a lot of diversity. In the physical world you are more aware of the politics of those around you...and they are much more likely to be consistent with your own. But once your friends list includes folks from HS, college, or others you've lost touch with, you begin speaking to an enormously diverse crowd.

I do find it enjoyable that one of my liberal friends has a very conservative friend and I get to follow their comments to each other sometimes. Occasionally I play along, switching sides because I am somewhere in between them politically. However I only see this with one person's threads. The rest are largely one sided.

I was talking about this the other day, but I've always believed that stupid people naturally gravitate towards whatever view is in the local majority. Meaning if you live in a liberal town, stupid people will be liberals, and vice versa if you live in a conservative town. Reason: people who are not very good at explaining or defending their positions are going to adopt the viewpoint that will require them to do that as seldom as possible. If you live in a liberal town, and say you're liberal, few people will challenge you on it or ask you to defend it.

The internet has thrown a huge monkey wrench into the works. No matter where you are, nobody is as insular as they used to be. Even out in the boonies, if you go on the internet, you might be exposed to any viewpoint at any time. I think a lot of people aren't used to the change, and have a hard time adapting.

I never thought of myself as a moderate by nature. When such a thing exists, I always want to get the right answer and avoid the wrong one, which sounds pretty extreme. But there are two moderating influences on that.

One is that even if every single issue had a definite right and wrong answer, human beings are not single issues, they're gigantic conglomerates of viewpoints. Nobody has every one right or every one wrong (although granted, some come a lot closer than others). So it's not a matter of endorsing one package of ideas or another package. I want to Line Item Veto bits of almost every package.

Secondly, not every issue does have a definite right and wrong answer. A lot of things are matters of opinion, and others are matters of indeterminate fact. Like when does personhood begin? No doubt there's a definite right answer to that question, but we don't know for sure what it is. And a lot of people who think they do know have got suspect reasoning. For example, people who think life begins at conception on religious grounds. You can reasonably believe that life begins at conception if you want, but if you believe it because the Bible says so, we have to point out that the Bible doesn't actually say or even imply that at all.

For that reason, I always seem to spend more time trying to tell people how to think than tell them what to think. I don't mean here. Pretty much every poster I talk to around here is as smart as me or smarter. I might quite possibly be the dumbest of all the people that I regularly associate with around here. (But since there are only a handful of those left, I'm not slamming myself too hard here).

But in most places, people have insane reasoning processes, or none at all. You have to talk about how to think before you can talk about what to think. And if you try to tell people what to think, they won't listen to what you say about how to think.

Example in next post:

Here's a recent example from Facebook. First off, I don't consider the person who posted this to be dumb by any means. Nor does this person always post about politics. But when they do, it's always cliches and homilies and simplistic "we're right and everyone else is wrong" rah-rah type stuf. A lot of even fairly smart people seem completely unable to grasp that reasonable people might disagree on a question, and I don't know this person well enough to know if they're serious or taunting someone or what. Here's what they posted:



So, how do you respond to this without attacking them (guaranteeing that they won't listen to you), or quoting logical fallacies from a book (which would just make their eyes glaze over), or by engaging in fallacies oneself (like by arguing negative points about liberalism, which would be changing the subject). The trick here is to say something that the person might listen to, which acknowledges that there is a certain level of truth in what they're saying, but gently pointing out that it's not as black and white as they think, while still respecting the sincerity of their belief. It's not easy. Here's what I came up with, and if anybody else would like to suggest something better, I may try to use it the next time I attempt such a thing:



Overall, I'm fairly happy with this. The joke at the end makes the point fairly well, but the rhetorical question at the beginning (why did liberals support slavery?), I'm not too happy with. I think it should have started a bit more gently. The point was to point out that it was Republicans who abolished slavery (and took a larger role in getting women the vote, I believe), so simply equating everything good with a reason to vote for Democrats doesn't quite make sense. This person is one of those who posts a lot on gay marriage, usually taking the view that anyone who dares to oppose it is a monster, so what can we make of the fact that a lot of the things they're boasting about here were done by some of those monsters?

The bottom line is that I never had a chance to talk about liberalism myself. The only point I'm making here is that the issues aren't as black and white as this person thinks. I frequently find myself trying to make that point, and thinking that once that's done, I'll move on to the issues themselves. But that time never seems to come.

It really isn't about smart v stupid, it is about effortful v lazy. Kahneman refers to "System 1" the automatic processes that take place in your brain and "System 2" the effortful, attention demanding processes.

System 1 easily generates a story from incomplete information and tests that for "comfortableness." As long as the story feels comfortable it is taken as "correct." As a species we don't activate System 2 unless we have to or are prone to by way of special training.

If you are surrounded by liberals (conservatives) and don't engage your system 2, system 1 will use the information it gets from the environment to create a story about reality. If all you get is information from a liberal (conservative) perspective, that's what system 1 uses to build a story. As long as it is comfortable you stick with it....even with a high intelligence level.

Add in our psychological discomfort at being wrong and we are much more likely to engage in character attacks than utilize System 2.

It may not be just laziness. Remember those studies where a whole class of people would raise their hands to agree with an absolutely false statement, and people who weren't in on it would tend to raise their hands too, rather than buck the crowd? And that's with an absolutely false statement. With politics it's often not so clear. You don't have to agree with statements you know are false, only ones you aren't sure about one way or the other. But say you spend your whole life knowing that if you agree with these kinds of statements, you won't be challenged, attacked, or put in uncomfortable situations. Then, along comes the internet, and there's no safe hiding place any more. You can't rubber stamp either side without subjecting yourself to scrutiny.

One thing that disturbs me is seeing where certain people's comfort zones are. A lot of them are perfectly happy and eager to believe that they're surrounded by monsters without a shred of decency, and that these people can be identified by their disagreement on any issue. I think the average person may be lazy, may be hypocritical, uninformed, even stupid, but nevertheless the average person is a fairly decent sort, who basically wants to do the right thing, and when they're wrong, it's more likely to be due to laziness than maliciousness. I've got Left Wing friends who act like they want to believe they're living in the Third Reich, surrounded by Gestapo, and that abslutely every dissenting idea is a deep laid plot against decency. Voter ID laws are a conspiracy to disenfranchise half the population. Everyone is a birther (I've yet to meet one myself). Anybody with even the slightest reservation against abortion wants to take the right to vote and own property away from women, et cetera.

Incidentally, I said the other day that the kooky political views on my Facebook Friends list all came from left wingers, but that I thought that was just a reflection of the people that I personally know, not the population at large. That seemed to be confirmed today when I saw the Wall of a Democrat friend, and it was filled with people he knew from high school going on about how Limbaugh was completely innocent in this Sandra Fluke business, and that all the attacks on him were examples of the left wing tendency to go after successful people. (I don't care where you stand on birth control coverage or Limbaugh in general, it seems absolutely clear to me that he dug his own hole in this particular case). So the kooky right wing people are out there, I just don't know any of them. I wish I did know a few, just to get a more accurate overall picture.

Indeed, there is no single cause. Peer pressure, social loafing, poor thinking skills, a tendency to identify in/out groups. The list goes on, and on.

But intellectually lazy is the default state of the human mind and is there all the time. Peer pressure is situational. It surely has an impact, but only for some.

I agree that most people are decent sorts. No matter how wrong he is, the Governor sincerely believes he is making the world a better place. I am just saddened that in a world with google people don't make the effort to get good information before proposing broad policy initiatives.

I'm not surprised about that though. Our instincts on who to believe or not believe are short-circuiting in the digital age. So many "experts" with so little actual expertise are running around making claims that are credible to our "guts" that it is hard to know who to believe.