Kratoklastes comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong

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Comment author: MugaSofer 10 January 2013 11:17:02AM 2 points [-]

Please do not derail threads to promote your political opinions.

In addition, you appear to be suffering from the halo effect here - pledging allegiance is Bad (because it's similar to North Korea) and superstition, "woo-girls, laugh-tracks, zinger comedy, etc" and being "heavily indoctrinated" all magically follow. Bad Things somehow generating other Bad Things is pretty damn magical thinking, but it's a common pattern to fall into (if you're lazy you get fat, if you ban prayer in schools you get school shootings.)

If, on the other hand, you have some theory as to how "North-Korea style pledging of allegiance to a piece of coloured cloth" is somehow the cause of all these things, and it is relevant to, y'know, rationality, then I advise you to write a top-level post on the topic.

And for the record, I'm not American, and while the low sanity waterline is a problem - and not just in America - I am not especially freaked out by people "pledging allegiance" to their country, or for that matter by laugh tracks.

Comment author: Kratoklastes comment score below threshold [+] (6 children)

Comment author: Kratoklastes 10 January 2013 10:08:16PM -5 points [-]

Do you seriously think that the Pledge of Allegiance (and other similar things) are not designed to indoctrinate? Let's go to the writings of the guy who penned the Pledge of Allegiance:

"..the training of citizens in the common knowledge and the common duties of citizenship belongs irrevocably to the State." (emphasis mine)

The foundational aim of indoctrination is to get people when their minds are sufficiently plastic as to have few critical filters (i.e., in childhood) and to 're-wire' the plastic brain/mind with the indoctrinator's desired trope at the front. This is done by rote (church liturgies, pledges and so forth).

As elsewhere, you commit a logical fallacy: that the fact that you're unaware of the work that has been done showing that propaganda works, means that it doesn't.

Also, bad things do cause other bad things if the other bad things stem from a reduction in a defence mechanism, where the reduction was caused by the initial bad thing. Bombing water treatment (bad thing) and sewage plants causes increases in water borne disease (other bad things).

There's no requirement for magic (and therefore no requirement for attempts at deploying hackneyed middle-school debating tropes).

There is a very sound basis for believing that attempts to indoctrinate lead to a tendency for the population to be indoctrinated: the best basis that I can think of is that governments invest heavily in indoctrination using the same methodology as developed by Bernays and later Goebbels. If the methdology was not leading to the desired result, .gov would change it (I'm no admirer of .gov's ability to get things right, but the indoctrination of the pubic is the sine qua non of the tax-parasite's life).

Indoctrinated individuals have a greater tendency to lower levels of critical thinking (ever had an argument with a born again Christian? cheap shot, but I can give you a bunch of cites from the psych lit, too). Thus any device that increases the net level of indoctrination will cause - not by 'magic' - an increase in other things associated with reduced critical faculties.

Comment author: Kawoomba 10 January 2013 11:05:07PM 3 points [-]

What's with the formatting? Please adhere to standard conventions, there's a reason for them (did I do that right?).

Also, you're overusing applause lights in your comments, it's frankly annoying. We're at least trying not to march our little soldier arguments against each other, but to shift our opinions as we encounter flaws in our arguments and strength in the other commenters'. Goebbels and born-against-Christian (hah, I'm gonna leave that typo in) examples just kill rational discourse.

Comment author: MugaSofer 11 January 2013 12:06:37PM * 0 points [-]

While I agree with your comment, I must say said formatting is simply being (over)used for emphasis, and it seems like rather a cheap shot to attack it.

Comment author: Kawoomba 11 January 2013 04:48:31PM * 1 point [-]

The remark on the formatting was not meant as a cheap shot or to denigrate the content in any way. At least for me bold/colored text interspersed in a paragraph makes it significantly harder to read and to focus on the flow of the sentences and their nuances. You always have some bold attention! screaming word in your immediate peripheral vision. If it's a short comment making a single point that is acceptable, but in a multiparagraphed comment it gets tedious.

So I'm happy to lead our arguments where noone has gone before, just not to lead them there boldly ...

Comment author: Kratoklastes comment score below threshold [+] (1 child)

Comment author: Kratoklastes 11 January 2013 01:27:45AM * -7 points [-]

It's been some time since I checked the standard style manuals: is there really a stated style for emphasis in comments on the internet? It would not surprise me too much - there are a lot of people with too much time on their hands, who like telling others what to do (and the less important the sphere of endeavour, the more urgent the need to be boss of it). [Oh, and apologies in advance for not using em-dashes...]

As to whether you "d[id] that right", it depends. Reading it back to myself, it would appear not. Try all-caps on the bold bits and see if it makes sense hen you read it out loud... then do the same for the material to which you took stylistic objection and see if that makes sense.

As to Goebells: that specific example really needed to be in there, since he made clear that he admired Bernays (and the American eugenics movement). Born-against-Christians are the handiest example of indoctrination.

I don't know what "applause lights" are: doubtless some egregious thing that is so important that it merited a new jargonistic term for the [meta]cognoscenti to use to beat us 'mundanes'. (What does the style manual say about italicising Italian words on the internet?)

LBNL: if you don't think that there is a clique here who is, quite specifically, "march[ing] [their] little soldier arguments", I think you have not been paying attention. It's as bad as coming across a coven of Randians, and almost as correct-line as the Freepers (the trolling of Freepers is one of life's little joys).

The sort of people who say "Your entire theory of life and morals is incomplete and would bee useless for programming an AI" in response to a 21-word phrase at the end of a comment which did not purport to be exhaustive or complete, and was never put forward as a candidate for coding an AI.

Also the sort of people who say "What you said doesn't make sense to me, so you must be wrong and not know what you're talking about" while revealing gaping holes in their understanding of early-undergraduate material that is absolutely central to the issue at hand.

I've taught people like that - usually at first year level: people who throw about words like "utilitarian" and "consequentialist", while steadfastly ignoring the long-term consequences of the system they are advocating (or implicitly supporting) and attacking anybody they view as ideologically impure. It's hilarious.

Comment author: MugaSofer 11 January 2013 12:26:32PM * 0 points [-]

It's been some time since I checked the standard style manuals: is there really a stated style for emphasis in comments on the internet?

No. There are, however, community norms in this particular corner of the internet.

As to Goebells: that specific example really needed to be in there, since he made clear that he admired Bernays (and the American eugenics movement). Born-against-Christians are the handiest example of indoctrination.

Still, it is generally a good idea to avoid politicized examples, especially here.

I don't know what "applause lights" are: doubtless some egregious thing that is so important that it merited a new jargonistic term for the [meta]cognoscenti to use to beat us 'mundanes'.

Was that really necessary? Applause Lights.

LBNL: if you don't think that there is a clique here who is, quite specifically, "march[ing] [their] little soldier arguments", I think you have not been paying attention. It's as bad as coming across a coven of Randians, and almost as correct-line as the Freepers (the trolling of Freepers is one of life's little joys).

The sort of people who say "Your entire theory of life and morals is incomplete and would bee useless for programming an AI" in response to a 21-word phrase at the end of a comment which did not purport to be exhaustive or complete, and was never put forward as a candidate for coding an AI.

Also the sort of people who say "What you said doesn't make sense to me, so you must be wrong and not know what you're talking about" while revealing gaping holes in their understanding of early-undergraduate material that is absolutely central to the issue at hand.

I've taught people like that - usually at first year level: people who throw about words like "utilitarian" and "consequentialist", while steadfastly ignoring the long-term consequences of the system they are advocating (or implicitly supporting) and attacking anybody they view as ideologically impure. It's hilarious.

Firstly, Arguments As Soldiers.

Secondly, please provide specific examples if you have some criticism, don't just sort people into a reference class containing idiots.

Comment author: MugaSofer 11 January 2013 12:05:00PM -2 points [-]

Do you seriously think that the Pledge of Allegiance (and other similar things) are not designed to indoctrinate? Let's go to the writings of the guy who penned the Pledge of Allegiance:

"..the training of citizens in the common knowledge and the common duties of citizenship belongs irrevocably to the State." (emphasis mine)

The foundational aim of indoctrination is to get people when their minds are sufficiently plastic as to have few critical filters (i.e., in childhood) and to 're-wire' the plastic brain/mind with the indoctrinator's desired trope at the front. This is done by rote (church liturgies, pledges and so forth).

I am not claiming that it is not indoctrination, by that definition. Nor am I claiming that it is. I am asserting that the term "indoctrination" is counterproductive, as the connotations, particularly the political ones, are likely to interfere with discussion and clear thinking. I also note that this comment section is probably not the place for such discussion.

There's no requirement for magic (and therefore no requirement for attempts at deploying hackneyed middle-school debating tropes).

Of course not.

If, on the other hand, you have some theory as to how "North-Korea style pledging of allegiance to a piece of coloured cloth" is somehow the cause of all these things, and it is relevant to, y'know, rationality, then I advise you to write a top-level post on the topic.

I stand by this statement.

Thus any device that increases the net level of indoctrination will cause - not by 'magic' - an increase in other things associated with reduced critical faculties.

This is usually referred to here as the need to "raise the sanity waterline" - I'm not sure where the term originates - and as I said, I am aware that it's a problem, but I don't see why Americans pledging allegiance is an especially vital part of that.

Incidentally, while this does not alter the substance of your post, I note that your writing style seems needlessly rhetorical, which is likely to attract hostility from people pattern-matching to various ideologues. This is a website dedicated to rationality, not politics.

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