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[Link] Salon piece analyzing Donald Trump's appeal using rationality
I'm curious about your thoughts on my piece in Salon analyzing Trump's emotional appeal using rationality-informed ideas. My primary aim is using the Trump hook to get readers to consider the broader role of Systems 1 and 2 in politics, the backfire effect, wishful thinking, emotional intelligence, etc.
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Comments (65)
Also, the problem with all the pieces that focus on Trump's style is that they completely ignore his substance. Trump's position on immigration is only "controversial" in the sense that the elite are against it while everyone else is for it. Thus it's not surprising that Trump is doing well. In fact looking at other western countries we see parties with similar positions doing well despite having styles that are all over the place.
Original thread here.
I like, especially given that the article is in left-wing Salon, that you didn't feel the need to signal that Trump is evil. This article manages to avoid the normal mind-kill of politics.
Thanks, and I appreciate your feedback on the draft, which helped improve the piece. Yeah, this is rare for a Salon piece that deals with Trump - most are really mindkill. I fought with the editors to make the headline less mindkillery than they wanted it to make.
Well, the "rationality" of the piece is rather dubious. For example consider your description of the "backfire effect":
Except Romney wasn't presenting evidence, he was making an assertion. And in a lot of circumstances it is perfectly rational to update away from assertions.
More generally, in a lot of cases you describe acting on fear as irrational even though the fear in question is perfectly rational.
Original thread here.
I start twitching when emphatic statements are made about the motivations of large numbers of people. How can you check on whether you're right?
This being said, Sanders is also appealing to anger and fear, and both candidates are also appealing to hope.
Gleb's article is about as rigorous as a (non-famous) academic author can be to still get published in the popular press.
Um, no, unless your definition of "popular press" excludes things like the New York Times and the like. A random sprinkling of buzzwords is not rigor.
Would he be allowed to add a link or two for people who want more background?
I actually had to struggle to get them to put in as many links as they allowed. They wanted links to Salon pieces, while I kept insisting on making more links to academic pieces. It's always a trade-off when going to a popular source like Salon, and James is right, it is about as rigorous as one can get in a venue like Salon. These are the trade-offs that are required if one chooses to spread rationality broadly.
Editors often remove links and usually don't like there being too many.
Nancy, I could have certainly made similar points about Sanders, although less emphatically. To some extent, all candidates are appealing to anger and fear, although Trump is the clearest and most strident example. This is why at the end of the article, I noted that "he is not the only candidate doing so. Whatever candidate you are considering, my fellow Americans, I hope you deploy intentional thinking and avoid the predictable errors in making your political decisions."
Good question on checking whether I'm right. I didn't go into this in depth in the source, due to space limitations, but I read quite a bit of primary sources of why people are voting for Trump. I have a scholarly background in studying emotions and deployed that methodology for studying this topic.
Should we expect your Anti-Trump campaigning here until November, or what?
I will probably vote for Trump if he wins the Republican nomination, and I don't think the article was anti-Trump.
I am not an American and I'll not vote. I hate the intelligentsia's attitude toward the man.
You're living in a filter bubble if you think this.
I'm not sure why I got downvoted for this. Unless you define "elite" as those against it, this statement is clearly untrue.
Evidence?
According to Pew Research Center, "More than eight-in-ten Republicans (84%) say the nation should impose tighter restrictions on immigration, compared with about six-in-ten Democrats (58%)."
That doesn't seem like "everyone" to me, unless you count 16% of Republicans and 42% of Democrats as "elite."
Okay, so it's not "everyone", but it's a majority.
So you have a majority of voters wanting something, a politician saying he will deliver, the politician has wide support... and this all makes the voters irrational because... uhm... because neuroscience explains that the voters actually have emotions, oh the horrors!
I suppose next time I care about something, I should vote for a politician who promises the exact opposite, so that no neuroscientist can suspect me of being a helpless victim of my own opinions. /s
I think we have some slippage of concepts here. The majority of voters want tighter restrictions, but only half agree with Trump's position on a ban on Muslim migration.
From the article you linked:
I don't believe any other Republican has supported the ban, so that the issue is an overwhelming win for Trump in the Republican Party.
Yup, agreed it's a win for him in the Republican party.
And given the grammar and back history of this user, I'm pretty since it's another Eugene Neir sock puppet. Also reported to the admin.
Or maybe he was referencing how the Poles' polls are indeed very anti-immigration. ;-)
This comment was -3 karma last time I looked. Now, it's +6. Given its extremist language, I decided to look up this account. Having looked at the history of this account, I'm pretty since it's another Eugene Neir sock puppet. Hope you had fun voting down this post, Eugene Neir - reported to the admin.
You seem to be making the same points Scott Adams has been making since last August. I'm surprised you didn't quote or link his blog.
Yup, Scott Adams and I have been making similar points for a while now. The Salon editors didn't want a link to that source, though.
Not surprising given how much Scott Adams is hated by social justice types.
I had to fight to get that many links to academic sources, they wanted more links to previous Salon pieces
Do you think Salon would publish a piece about how to check on what you read?
Do you already have something written on the subject? I'd like to read it.
No. It would probably be worth doing but difficult, since evaluating truth or at least plausibility depends on a complex web of assumptions.
Yes if you could fit it into some kind of social justice narrative such as how to decode if the author is a secret racist.
While James' answer was somewhat cynical, I suspect he's not far from the mark. If it fits into a liberal narrative, and pushes the right emotional buttons, they might publish it.
Why isn't this thread in the outreach thread?
Outreach thread is for stuff that does not have potential for good discussion, but is just about successful outreach. I posted this here because it seems like it had potential for an interesting discussion.
Did you expect another reaction in the karma that the post received?
Hard to say how representative that karma is, considering that Eugene Neir is involved.
I don't think it makes sense to blame all lowly voted posts on Eugine. I don't also remember Eugine being involved in the discussion about InIn, so I don't see it as a his fight.
In his persona as VoiceOfRa and Azathoth123 and The_Lion, he was heavily involved with criticizing InIn-related posts. Heck, he even tried to wipe the Intentional Insights wiki entry.
Okay, I stand corrected on that point.
Still the post is at -11 while most of the post on which Eugine voted don't get that many downvotes. If the post had 13 downvotes and 2 upvotes and 3 upvotes are from Eugine that would still mean that the LW community doesn't really appreciate it.
Ok, good point, I will update on that.
He got involved in two of Gleb's posts, both of which got heavier-than-normal downvoting.