Divisions and Collectives: Unison Choruses are Not Interesting.

Definitions are tricky when it comes to naming divisions or collectives. What defines a nation? What defines human?

I tend to avoid US politics as much as I can. By that, I mean really joining an identified group or attaching to a particular cause. To do so, I'd have to take the cause's projections at face value, and wring out the background noise and ego interplay that I tend to overanalyze. I'm an avid spectator, finding the subtle lawless nature of humans embodied in international relations, similar to business.

In 2011, China smashed and grabbed Mother Google. It was a pretty overt act to hack the email addresses of activists and do Mao know what to them.

Google replied back in a fit of anger.... well the founders at the time did. They were outraged...

And now they are trying to make China work (even though what US company has successfully cracked the alluring China nut?). Because, if they don't, they'll die. If a company lost. Baidu will grow, spin off a separate US-centered service and collect more Westerner personal data for the Chinese government than the US government.

This underscores a serious problem with trying to satisfy the values of an entire group of humans, naturally prone to divisiveness and fractiousness. You can't get them to agree on anything in unison. If a domineering murderous race of aliens invaded mother earth, you'd find some people who would agree with their cause.

The main problem I see is that there is no universal right path. So many believe there is. The larger the collective the more we move toward one path as whole, at a slower rate. Things eventually right themselves. Unity helps with progression, until it moves you the wrong way and the world lights on fire.

Today I read an article on "Experts" and how often they get it wrong. The primary example used was a researcher who believed that the world was overpopulated. I've lost a lot of trust in academia. 1.5 years of grad school did that to me. In doing research, I was quite shocked at how data was fabricated by many people. They desperately wanted to be correct, and would omit or fill in data to make something appear statistically significant. The professors didn't advocate fabricating data outright, much like an attorney wouldn't advocate sharing evidence that was questionably related to a case.

The integrators outperformed their colleagues in pretty much every way, but especially trounced them on long-term predictions. Eventually, Tetlock bestowed nicknames (borrowed from the philosopher Isaiah Berlin) on the experts he’d observed: The highly specialized hedgehogs knew “one big thing,” while the integrator foxes knew “many little things.”

Hedgehogs are deeply and tightly focused. Some have spent their career studying one problem. Like Ehrlich and Simon, they fashion tidy theories of how the world works based on observations through the single lens of their specialty. Foxes, meanwhile, “draw from an eclectic array of traditions, and accept ambiguity and contradiction,” Tetlock wrote. Where hedgehogs represent narrowness, foxes embody breadth.

Incredibly, the hedgehogs performed especially poorly on long-term predictions within their specialty. They got worse as they accumulated experience and credentials in their field. The more information they had to work with, the more easily they could fit any story into their worldview.

My loss of trust in research, academia, and facts in of themselves prevents me from getting along with emotive believers. If I do get along, it's because I'm looking for someone to laugh at inside, or test the limits of a person's willingness to go along with something.

Debate can be fun for me when someone doesn't take something too seriously, though I may come off as a bit too nihilistic for some. When an expert is referenced to boost a factual argument, it's hard to go along with that in the debate. I will usually just say that I have to read that article for myself. Just because someone is world renowned doesn't make them infallible to our human ego.  There can be two truths to anything. At a point, personal brand and politics choose which truth to enforce across a discipline. And that's not really scientific at that point.

Sometimes, when I feel sly, I try a few tricks to test how far I can move someone. This isn't much for a legitimate desire to change their opinion as it is to reinforce the nature of human identity.

1. Agree with Friend on much of what they are saying
2. Throw shade on those who disagree with Friend and I
3. Present a specific rational viewpoint of the Opposing Side and add some reason of understanding to that.
4. Test the response of Friend, and if Friend doesn't take that bait move back to Step 2, but throw more shade.

At some point of doing several repeats, the Stubborn Friend gets suspicious about you possibly being a closeted member of the Opposing Side, and becomes more adversarial, typically resorting to personal attacks. This can sometimes result in the loss and failure of a friendship if the person is too indoctrinated.

The Appeasing Friend will fall for those traps to the point of appeasing near agreement. They may change the subject out of fear of falling to the Opposing Side. Or they'll use tricks to present the irrational viewpoints of the Opposing Side as something they just can't understand. At the end, if they're embarrassed for their ideological movement, they'll present themselves as the more reasonable and willing to compromise sort as a way out. Not so dumb, perhaps.

Unfortunately, I just fed them the antibodies to avoid the specific path the next time. They'll be better armed.

The Ideological Friend may fall for part of the trap, but when they start tracking they will pull the rug out and pretend there is a disconnect or misunderstanding, perhaps weighing you down in irrelevant details to stall progress of the debate. This type can be frustrating to many, but I admire them for it.

I practiced this the other day with a debate about abortion. The Friend was upset about the abortion vote in Alabama and commented on the idiotic freaks who supported the law. He was emoting bile and anger over what was to be a happy celebratory lunch. I tried to change subject by using a half joke that I'd rather not talk about abortion while eating all this food. Friend looked at me, disgusted. "You agree with the law?"

"I actually don't, and I don't see how it's going to stand through the court system, they're just testing the limits, pretty smart to do before election year to get the hard right out to vote," I said.

Friend "Well the fact that you can't talk about it while eating means that you find abortion gross in some way."

I respond "Well, it is kinda gross, have you ever seen one? It would definitely be a thumbs down for me on my Netflix watch list."

Friend is shocked and turning red from anger. Friend tries to relax and calm down and caveman the question "What makes abortion worse than a woman's period or a man's semenal omission, isn't that a loss of  life also?"

I purposely take the bait and add some gas to the fire "Well I don't think a lack of sex is murder."

"Abortion, is, not, murder," he says emphatically.

Friend responds exactly how I thought Friend would and I say "If you say so. And capital punishment is just resource reduction."

The argument twists and turns into capital punishment, but eventually I get movement only after Friend resorts to throwing shade at supporters of the law "Savage freaks, imposing their backwards religion."

I know Friend is a dog-lover, as am I – I talk about how some cultures eat dogs, presenting scenario as if we are walking through the street and someone is eating a dog. "Wouldn't you find that offensive? Wouldn't you wish that you could prevent those dogs from being murdered?"

Friend expectantly responds with "Of course, I'd want a world where no animals were murdered!" Friend is a vegan, so that's a given.

"I want that too! And I wish people would be responsible enough to mitigate pregnancies from the start, and stop the spread of HIV, sterilize better to prevent MRSA, and not kill animals or people (unless the animal or person started attacking us."

"Yeah," Friend replies.

Satisfied, I say, "cool, so we agree then."

Friend: "No I don't." And I can see the kumbaya replaced with red anger again.

Nobody enjoys being wrong. Worse than that, is being often wrong. Your personal brand can only take so many hits.  

Globalism embodies such challenges in getting people to agree. Human nature feeds off divisiveness, in the need to satisfy our ego and betterize our peculiar minuscule existence – and beat the Jones. Experts and respected figures, as much as they try to appear above cesspool, still swim in the sewers.

Globalism is about hegemony. And when you feel like you have the world in your hands, it's so easy to be supportive of it. When the world and the norn scrolls tug in an opposing ideologies, humans resist and reject it.

Like world peace,  ending hunger, disease, and even unwanted pregnancies, it's an objective that most rational people can support if they are stripped naked in an arctic sensory deprivation glacier, holding onto each other for dear warmth.

We are not that evolved from the our cavemen ancestors. Arguably, societal support systems have genetically devolved us.

Diverse experimentation, competition, while letting systems fail and rebuild themselves without overreaching support will get us closer to a globalist eventuality most want to achieve. If not, then an alien invasion or AI revolution will help too.

Over 160 years ago, human slavery was legal – blacks could be bought and sold like cattle. If America was a world power in 1965, black slavery could have become the world economic system. Over 65 years ago segregation was still legal (and it still exists in spirit through local school gerrymandering!). The Soviet Union used American hypocrisy as legitimate propaganda. And it's not an American thing only – Look at the imperial colonial system spurred in Europe. The list goes on. The system now isn't perfect, but the world is entrenched into it by nature of today's hegemony. It's seemingly better for humans than previous systems. It's allowed more population growth, while increasing access worldwide to clean water, food, and air conditioning. But is it best? China doesn't agree.

I admire people who keep their eyes on seemingly insurmountable goals, especially when I agree with them. There is a place for them in society. I'm fascinated by the David Dukes also who project goals in which I don't agree. There is also a place for people like that in society – to remind us of our worse nature. Letting them articulate their goals reminds us of our ancestral flaws, or strengths. It gives something for the majority of people to agree over, while we continue our search for the next divides.

-- Hashioki