Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: Why we need to stop talking…, in reply to Kirk Serpes,
Do you see it as a “war of ideas” or as “dinner table discussion”? Or something else. I see political discourse (or debate) as mostly adversarial.
I see it as both, and other things besides. For example, this debate right here in this thread is a political discourse. But I'd hope it could be more constructive than adversarial. It will certainly be adversarial at times - Rosemary threw down a gauntlet of challenge to you, so you come back with your rebuttal. But Rosemary is a person who can be convinced - as am I. You might be too. Just because the ideas are warring doesn't mean the people need to be. We are just vessels for that war, and we could change sides. I often change sides - usually to the weaker side. Just to feel it, to get an idea of the challenges, to expand my own mind and skills, to develop the ideas themselves more. Only when actually forced to take action would I generally show my hand, committing fully to one side. But until then, I can't, for instance, throw my lot in with Labour. I'm not convinced myself that that would be a good thing to do. I'm not going to go to war for them, if it's actually the Green army that's closer to my personal views. I'm not even going to war against National if they get something right, as occasionally happens.
It can also be a dinner table discussion. We're friends, talking some shit over drinks, and bonding. In the case of PAS this is literally true a lot of the time. A whole lot of outcomes completely aside from political action come from it. We make friends (and some enemies). There's probably been sex. I'm pretty sure that career opportunities and other organizational changes besides what is directly discussed come up. Birds of a feather, and all that. It's both good and bad for robust debate. Good because the discussion can become deep. Bad because it can be highly exclusionary, and we can talk ourselves into groupthink.
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Speaker: Why we need to stop talking…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
It beggars belief that he is so effective.
If I think Kirk has a strong point, it’s that we need to get over ourselves about this. Key has – he’s not too proud to spin in ways that make people of intellect think he must be mentally deficient, talking to others who are likewise. In reality, he’s bloody clever, and makes conscious effort to dial that down, for a Kiwi audience. Especially for a Kiwi audience, which is committedly anti-intellectual, in the main.*
My mum told me a funny story last night – that some varsity professor she knew was drinking in a club and chatting to a guy. They were hitting it off. The other guy was some kind of tradie, and eventually the subject of what the professor did came up. He shamefacedly admitted that he was the head of the politics department at a University. The other guy didn’t even bat an eyelid, he patted him on the arm and just said “Well, you’d never have known”, and they carried on without pause into other subjects. The funny part of the story is that the professor felt it was one of the greatest compliments he’d ever received in his life.
This is what the intellectual left struggles with. On the one hand, it’s desperately important to all of us that we signal our brilliance to each other. Some of that’s ego, but also a lot of it is just to save wasting time – people don’t have to explain everything to you if you let on that you already have the background to get what they’re on about. On the other hand, we have to be very careful not to let clever intellectualism alienate us from the general public, if what that public thinks and does is important to us, and we want to be an important part of it.
The message I’m giving here is probably that the intellectual left probably shouldn’t look to it’s own feelings and habits about how best to convince people. If it wants to approach that systematically and intelligently, then probably looking to statistics is a way of doing it that suits what intellectuals are good for.
@Kirk
I get where you’re coming from
I expected that, and I look forward to your further posts. This is, from a purely intellectual POV, very bloody interesting :-).
There maybe a few issues where this is a “right” answer in purely objective terms (if such a thing exists). But the whole idea behind framing is that there is no such thing as a rational choice
Well, at least not a purely rational choice. I don’t even think we have to abandon the idea of an objectively right answer. We just have to accept that we are moving towards truth step by step, and sometimes it’s enough just to be more right, without ever needing to be totally right. We don’t have to solve an ancient philosophical dilemma before we can progress (well, OK, we do have to solve one – it’s known as Buridan’s Ass. So long as we choose not to die of hunger).
*Also important to remember that there is no shortage of right wing intellectuals. Do they suffer from these scruples? Some may, but enough don’t. In fact I expect they tell exactly the same story I’m telling right here the other way around, anywhere that the left has the ascendancy. In 5 years, it might be what they’re doing here, after the left has got better at spin-doctoring and regained some power. I can distinctly remember it being a common complaint during the Clark years that Labour’s spin machine was just too effective for the poor old intellectual Don Brash.
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Speaker: Why we need to stop talking…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Agreed, to all that. Although to your post, and my own, I know that the obvious comeback is also a fair one - that we would say that. It's one of the most popular rhetorical techniques of all to lay claim to avoiding rhetoric. Key uses it himself all the time, presenting himself as the unpolitical politician.
We have to be aware that rhetoric is unavoidable, that our own choice of language exerts both logical and illogical effects. What I baulk at is deliberately increasing that, when my own efforts in discussion are usually directed towards the exact opposite. I conduct discussion to inform myself at least as much as to inform other poeple, and spinning to myself is rather pointless. If a spin is ever put there on purpose, it's only with the purpose of seeing how others unpack it, and thus to sometimes lay bare my own unconscious assumptions. Which can seem disingenuous to others - guilty as charged! What can I say - I don't accept that there is an idea of context free language in the first place, so wrapping something up in a context I think provides an insight is sometimes the only way to elicit an equal and opposite response from an interlocutor. It can lay bare what context they are forced to wrap the contrary position up in.
Taking a more statistical approach to this is something I have to say is less horrid to think of than just doing it by mastering the art of self deception, as a part of mastering deception generally. So long as I'm reasonably clear about what I am actually trying to say, then if I choose language statistically that is likely to give it greater strength and thus greater clarity, then that doesn't leave a horrible foul taste of bullshit artistry.
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I find the idea of changing a narrative a bit difficult, since my own aim in reading is always to unpack the narrative, to look right past it to any actual facts or discussion points that are being made. The task of then taking that discussion and then rebundling it into emotive/suggestive language that supports whatever my own take is, always takes second priority. It's an afterthought, an insincere spin.
Which is not to say that it's a bad idea at all. I'm just saying that I find it difficult. Essentially it's dedicating a lot of effort to rhetoric, to subject matter that is not argumentation and facts at all. I bloody hate it when reading it, so it causes cognitive dissonance to deliberately put that kind of thing into my own writing.
Of course it's going to happen anyway - I interpret the world in my own way and use my own words to describe it. My spin will be there even if I'm unaware of it myself. The bit that's hard is conducting discussion in which the importance of that spin takes a very high position. Weighing up what effect each word will have at a subconscious level on the audience - that's just not my bag. Usually, I presume that deliberate attempts of that kind will be seen right through because my audience is primarily people like myself, who are themselves masters of unpacking.
I'm not saying that Kirk is suggesting I personally have to do any of the things he's saying here - I don't think the message of this post is that we should start adding lots of noise to our signals to each other. But it is about adding a lot of "noise" - which I scare-quote only because it's noise to me - to official communications made as concerted efforts by people on the Left trying to consciously exert some kind of pressure to make changes.
Which is hardly news to them. It's not like rhetoric just got discovered for the first time recently. What's interesting here is taking it to a new level using scientific methods. How to maximize the subliminal noise in one's own favour. Also, how to neutralize the subliminal noise of your enemies.
It's definitely needed. I'm not the person to do it, though. I can hardly think of more soul destroying writing than what is essentially advertising copy. I can hardly think of anything I'd relish less than doing any of this with my own writing.
It's needed because the other side is doing it, and doing it well. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
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Legal Beagle: Cameron Slater: computer hacker?, in reply to Brent Jackson,
Both of those cases benefit from comments.
I hope you realize I was joking. The idea that designers should be treated as infallible and their intentions unimportant struck me as quaint, like old sci fi depictions of AI are. To me, the intention of authors is still something that is important.
I personally probably over-comment my code, just like I do with my other writing.
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This is really great news.
That it is.
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Polity: Buying a fight with democracy, in reply to Matthew Poole,
So very, very occasionally indeed.
Yup. Although when a big recount happens involving courts and farting around challenging the rights of voters, then it's likely that a greater number would end up being discounted than what is picked up in the general statistical analysis of voter qualification. When it matters, they check carefully. When it's thousands of votes between them, there's just no point.
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Legal Beagle: Cameron Slater: computer hacker?, in reply to Rich Lock,
Um, yeah
So the book leaves it nicely ambiguous as to whether HAL is actually protecting his own sentience purely out of self interest, or just following programming, and pretending to be afraid as Dave turns his brain off, as a ploy that might work against a mere meat machine (and Dave does the whole thing implacably like a machine would ... nice irony)?
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Legal Beagle: Cameron Slater: computer hacker?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Also, as these people found out if someone, like a bank, makes an error and you exploit it to steal, then it’s still theft.
Yup - that kid who deposited a Jaffa packet into an ATM when I was a kid was definitely well aware that it wasn't kosher. I'd tell you how I know, but it's a long story that should not be told on the internet. To me, the main thing I learned was that hacking is not exactly the work of geniuses, the way it's always shown in Hollywood. The only "successful" fraudulent hacker I've ever known was an old mate who couldn't pass Computer Science 100 no matter how much I helped him with the assignments.
He only didn't get busted because the bank didn't press charges. I'm sure the evidence they had would have been pretty damning.
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Polity: Buying a fight with democracy, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I think you wanted * 0.00004. It was a percentage…so *0.004*0.01
No race was that close.
Occasionally one is. But in that case, they go through the votes carefully anyway.
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