Why are the intelligent and thought provoking posts generally ignored? (radical, racist)

[TnHilltopper]

Originally Posted by Reads2MUCH

Man, you beat me to it. That is exactly what I would have said. If a person has based a large part of their life on a certain belief then they will do anything to defend it because the last thing a lot of people want is to have their life changed so deeply that it rocks their very foundations. Also, a lot of people, including myself, just really don't like to be wrong. Now if there is undeniable evidence to support that something I said is false, then I will take it in stride. But I think most of us really believe in what we believe in because somewhere along the lines we have been convinced that our way is right. I guess its human nature.

To the bolded portion: So why do we hold to belief like grim death on a cold winters morning? I suspect it has a good deal to do with simple comfort. Comfort in "knowing" something as opposed to not knowing we is also the basis of many human fears. I'm sure we are all familiar with the term, "Fear of the unknown". When we believe something to be true, we no longer have to think about it as we just, "know" it, whereas when we do not, it becomes like a splinter in the back of our mind and consumes our thoughts and leads to the question, why. Many people are extremely uncomfortable not knowing.

As to the italicized portion: I'm still trying to determine why this is so pervasive among human kind in general. Why is it that few people don't mind being wrong and willingly and openly admit to not knowing or raising their hand and saying, you are right, I'm wrong, or simply, I do not know. Yet for others it seems that to be wrong is almost sinful or painful. For the life of me, I do not understand why this is.

[simpleharmonicmotion]

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

To the bolded portion: So why do we hold to belief like grim death on a cold winters morning? I suspect it has a good deal to do with simple comfort. Comfort in "knowing" something as opposed to not knowing we is also the basis of many human fears. I'm sure we are all familiar with the term, "Fear of the unknown". When we believe something to be true, we no longer have to think about it as we just, "know" it, whereas when we do not, it becomes like a splinter in the back of our mind and consumes our thoughts and leads to the question, why. Many people are extremely uncomfortable not knowing.

As to the italicized portion: I'm still trying to determine why this is so pervasive among human kind in general. Why is it that few people don't mind being wrong and willingly and openly admit to not knowing or raising their hand and saying, you are right, I'm wrong, or simply, I do not know. Yet for others it seems that to be wrong is almost sinful or painful. For the life of me, I do not understand why this is.

There are emotional and self-image beliefs that are tied to certain convictions, and if one changes those convictions or finds things that refute it, that person many have to re-examine many previously believed emotional and self-image beliefs. For SOME people, that is just too hard or too painful, so they would rather stick with their confirmation bias.
For some other people, their sense of self may not be as rooted to certain beliefs, so they can just change their mind and it won't matter.

[saganista]

It may not always be merely an individual thing. Adapting to new beliefs may come with legitimate concerns over earning black sheep status within a family or of outcast status within other social circles, and those can be jarring, wrenching prospects with regard to the established comfort-zones of longstanding relationships and modes of personal operation. It may boil down to a speaking up for Us versus Them thing for many people...an exercise in team loyalty, as it were...a continuing process of group membership confirmation.

And of course, change and progress themselves are liberal concepts based on mutable laws and continually evolving constructs. Conservatives deal more in rigid frameworks and fixed ideals that they define as being somehow above the fray of any intellectual debate to begin with. They don't deal so much in weighing and considering as they do in proclaiming and labeling. In this sense, it is only liberals that you can actually convince of anything, and all those who are capable of being persuaded to liberal ideals and opinions will already hold them in some degree.

I think this may explain some part of the lack of buzz that seems to surround more cerebral posts, while the name-calling fest down the block draws a far larger crowd. Conservatives are not much encouraged or well adapted to personal intellectual engagement and hence may tend to shy away from it. But they are good at denouncing and affirming, so given the chance, that's where their talents and preferences will most often lead them.

I am quite convinced that these ideas go a long way also toward explaining the phenomenon of AM radio and other forms of the right-wing disinformation media. These are all like giant pep rallies, whipping up team spirit and updating group strategy, while providing ever more reason why They must somehow be defeated. Liberals simply don't operate on this particular paradigm. They are engaged in individual, not group, processess and hence don't operate en masse on much of any level at all.

In any case, I don't find the premise of the thread title to be much of a surprise. Some certainly can't or can't yet engage fully at higher levels, while others simply won't and frankly don't ever intend to...

[old_cold]

"Conservatives are not much encouraged or well adapted to personal intellectual engagement and hence may tend to shy away from it. But they are good at denouncing and affirming, so given the chance, that's where their talents and preferences will most often lead them"

It is especially difficult sometimes to ignore broad brushing statements like this one.
As opposed to when one poster is directly insulting another, this kind of post lumps together and insults all.
It requires you to repeat to yourself "consider the source, consider the source" or get drawn into a fruitless defense.
Even if you don't want or intend to engage someone like this, it rankles( a little or a lot, depending on your mood and the color of the paint on that brush) to let a statement stand as if it is fact.

[Huckleberry3911948]

getting ignored is ok, its the anger that is harder to bear. clear thinking is not always what people wana hear, many post to vent. americans fail a lot. 50% divorce, 50% college flunk out.
both generate lots of non dischargable debt, a form of slavery and anger.
they need to reduce their failure, avoid it, to get rid of all this internet road rage.

[TnHilltopper]

Originally Posted by saganista

It may not always be merely an individual thing. Adapting to new beliefs may come with legitimate concerns over earning black sheep status within a family or of outcast status within other social circles, and those can be jarring, wrenching prospects with regard to the established comfort-zones of longstanding relationships and modes of personal operation. It may boil down to a speaking up for Us versus Them thing for many people...an exercise in team loyalty, as it were...a continuing process of group membership confirmation.

And of course, change and progress themselves are liberal concepts based on mutable laws and continually evolving constructs. Conservatives deal more in rigid frameworks and fixed ideals that they define as being somehow above the fray of any intellectual debate to begin with. They don't deal so much in weighing and considering as they do in proclaiming and labeling. In this sense, it is only liberals that you can actually convince of anything, and all those who are capable of being persuaded to liberal ideals and opinions will already hold them in some degree.

I think this may explain some part of the lack of buzz that seems to surround more cerebral posts, while the name-calling fest down the block draws a far larger crowd. Conservatives are not much encouraged or well adapted to personal intellectual engagement and hence may tend to shy away from it. But they are good at denouncing and affirming, so given the chance, that's where their talents and preferences will most often lead them.

I am quite convinced that these ideas go a long way also toward explaining the phenomenon of AM radio and other forms of the right-wing disinformation media. These are all like giant pep rallies, whipping up team spirit and updating group strategy, while providing ever more reason why They must somehow be defeated. Liberals simply don't operate on this particular paradigm. They are engaged in individual, not group, processess and hence don't operate en masse on much of any level at all.

In any case, I don't find the premise of the thread title to be much of a surprise. Some certainly can't or can't yet engage fully at higher levels, while others simply won't and frankly don't ever intend to...

I assert that your premise of this post is very "conservative" and its framework static and stereotypical.

Would you not agree that many of our widely held beliefs are beliefs that have been established over the course of time. With often having the newer concepts and ideas subjected to more scrutiny than those older?

I suggest your assertion is generalized and rather stereotypical due to the assumption that those of a more conservative mind are static and almost clinging in how they approach new concepts. While true of some, hardly true of all or even most. In fact, I would even make my own assertion that the scientific method is closer to a conservative approach of cautioned and reasoned than a liberal or progressive one since each new idea may spring from the imagination, it is tested against known and accepted fact, theory, and practice.

This tendency to base or test new ideas against older and established and usually accepted is something that to me is critical or else we run off to every half baked idea because someone suggest it is the next new and great thing.

I might use as an example the Georgian and Russian conflict of recent memory. At first, the news which at least in the past was a more liberalized field, hopped on the story that Russia invaded Georgia. Americans got on board, the government issued forth statements condemning Russia and we were poised to do everything but drive up to the front in our own tanks, jump in the fray and join in another war.

This was a progressive or "liberal" spreading of a story, too bad it was bunk and bovine excrement. In time we learned that well.... maybe it was those pesky Georgian's picking on some folks in South Ossetia and through further investigation, there was more to it than was first reported. However if we acted (as we did to some degree) based upon our first inclinations absent of caution, we may be deeper than we ended up.

This argument of progressive verses conservative is to me another example of absolutism. As people believe that something has to be this way, or that way, when in fact, what is often best is a measured and balanced approach. Why can't one progress new ideas and concepts by testing them against old and established norms before adopting them?

Maybe I approach this in this manner as I favor certain Daoist tendencies or maybe because my definition of what it is to be conservative is different than what others may consider it to be. I don't see conservatives opposed to change but only as desiring to change in a more measured and cautious manner than those who wish to test the water with both feet.

In any event, this all this way or all that way manner of approach seems rather odd, as I would neither wish to change so slow as to get left behind in a changing world nor would I wish to be a victim of folly where fools rush in.

[NewToCA]

Plenty of intelligent discussion threads exist in P&OC, a sufficient number to keep folks who wish to engage sufficiently occupied.

Multiple posters on both sides of the philosophical divide have contributed thoughtful ideas and perspectives.

Many threads are mixes of decent discussions mixed in with banter, simply ignore the banter and stick to responding to the specific posting(s) of interest to you.

[BigJon3475]

If everyone were a diehard conservative we would still be completely innocent running around in the garden of eden.

If everyone were diehard liberal important historical finds would be lost to new "better" ideas.

So with a bi-partisan effort we get things like the scientific method. Liberal viewpoints helped to achieve a tried and true method of evaluation. However since then conservatism has held on to the tried and true method since it was useful.

Both viewpoints have been useful in the process. A liberal viewpoint "might" have us advance but the conservative viewpoint ask if that advancement is better than we already have.

Reactive along with proactive both are stances that make sense in the world in real situations so they leave a pretty large gray area although in trying to describe one or the other generalizations are almost required.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

I assert that your premise of this post is very "conservative" and its framework static and stereotypical.

Certainly it's stereotypical throughout. Otherwise, it would have been a 375-page book instead of a 375-word post. You can't deal with such things quickly without oversimplifying. This comes with the territory.

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

Would you not agree that many of our widely held beliefs are beliefs that have been established over the course of time. With often having the newer concepts and ideas subjected to more scrutiny than those older?

Let me put it this way: certainly various contemporary beliefs were first established long ago and have not since been disproven. Various beliefs established concurrently with those have since been disproven and are no longer with us. Some new ideas arise in an original sense, and some arise simply by testing old ones under new or differing circumstances and seeing if the same results obtain. If they do not, an old idea may need to be modified or discarded and a new one added or put in its place. I'm not sure that newer ideas receive heightened scrutiny in any sense other than that they haven't yet been around long enough to have been put through the degrees of scrutiny that older ideas have.

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

I suggest your assertion is generalized and rather stereotypical due to the assumption that those of a more conservative mind are static and almost clinging in how they approach new concepts. While true of some, hardly true of all or even most.

I would have some disagreement with the last sentence. The idea of static cling is likely an apt enough one in all but degree, but resistance, and at times stubborn resistance, to the new or different is a hallmark of the conservative mindset. It is present of course in the liberal mindset as well with a difference again in degree, that being perhaps the one existing between a reasoned caution and an unreasoned disinclination. I would suggest that a conservative who does not exhibit such disinclinations is in fact a liberal.

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

In fact, I would even make my own assertion that the scientific method is closer to a conservative approach of cautioned and reasoned than a liberal or progressive one since each new idea may spring from the imagination, it is tested against known and accepted fact, theory, and practice.

The ascendance of the scientific method was perhaps the penultimate achievement of the 20th century, but I would not characterize it as being either liberal or conservative. It just is. The test of a new idea meanwhile does not come against old ideas. New ideas differ in some respect from old ideas, otherwise they would not be new. New ideas are tested in realizing that if one were true, then if you did X, Y should happen. You then do X and see what the results are. If they are Y and consistently Y, the idea itself will quickly gain acceptance. The political difference I think comes in the degree to which the scientific method is accepted and relied upon. Liberals are more willing to be led by evidence accumulated via the scientific method. Conservatives are not so willing to be led anywhere at all. They are more likely to distrust such evidence, even in some cases when it has become conclusive.

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

I might use as an example the Georgian and Russian conflict of recent memory....

I don't think this is an apt example of the scientific method in application. That method does not recommend or result in major leaps being taken on the basis of one or two preliminary observations. It is meanwhile as wrong to suggest that liberals favor a giddy, reckless approach as it is to say that conservatives favor no approach at all. In an earlier post, a train was described that was perfectly capable of travelling safely at 60 mph being constrained to 10 mph to the detriment of everyone. Encouraging a pace of 60 mph then is not the same as calling for 120 mph over a roadbed that has been rated at only 85 mph.

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

This argument of progressive verses conservative is to me another example of absolutism. As people believe that something has to be this way, or that way, when in fact, what is often best is a measured and balanced approach. Why can't one progress new ideas and concepts by testing them against old and established norms before adopting them?

Where would you see yourself falling in the train example? 10 mph...60 mph...85 mph...120 mph? Somewhere in between? I'm at 60.

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

Maybe I approach this in this manner as I favor certain Daoist tendencies or maybe because my definition of what it is to be conservative is different than what others may consider it to be. I don't see conservatives opposed to change but only as desiring to change in a more measured and cautious manner than those who wish to test the water with both feet.

What I hear you suggesting here is that at the theoretical level, there is a spectrum that is considerably broadened at either end from what we observe in the real world. With that, I would not disagree. But I have been focusing on the real world segment.

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

In any event, this all this way or all that way manner of approach seems rather odd, as I would neither wish to change so slow as to get left behind in a changing world nor would I wish to be a victim of folly where fools rush in.

Ah well, then...it must be that you are a liberal. :-)

[Rosinante]

Originally Posted by NewMexicanRepublican

I would have to agree with you 100%. Few people actually debated logically here during the election. Most of the posts were based on nothing more than preconceived emotion. They have no desire to learn or educate themselves on the facts.

And I would have to agree with you 100% too.