Tipping Point

Or, A Little Something To Cover The Emotional Wear And Tear.

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Comments

[WTP]

presumably on grounds that repetition makes a thing true

Yet on political and educational grounds (BIRM), it's true. If enough people hear an absurdity often enough, especially from a young enough age, if "everyone thinks so" it becomes, socially and thus for all practical purposes true. The various religions are a prime example. And I include atheism in there as well. It's kind of how atheism becomes a religion.

I recently (actually a couple times not so recently as well) had a crickets-chirping moment discussing basic economics with some co-workers. I didn't think that what I said was so far out in left field as it was the sort of thing Nobel Prize winners have stated, granted not recent ones. As I am new here, I decided to just shut up about it. But after much thinking as to why the reaction to what I said was so strong, I realize that such a thing is what younger people have been hearing from their boomer parents and in their schools and such for 30 years. It has been repeated over and over to them through school, news, music, and movies. They're not interested in discussing it. It simply is. IT's true because someone wrote it in a book somewhere and they and their teachers were presented that book earliest with more fanfare than what Nobel Prize winners and other classical economists have understood for over 200 years. And while these people's belief systems are more in line with thinking from 300 years or more before, yet since it was repackaged by Marx and such and they, or their parents and teachers, got it from a university that they paid tens of thousands of dollars to be told, it's the more "progressive" idea. And these are moderately conservative people I'm talking about here. I've heard them make derogatory comments about certain Democrats anyway.

[Smiles]

Childhood

http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/9275/ - "the chattering middle classes don’t want leading, they want mothering ... [Jacinta Ardern is] basically the president Mumsnet would have if it were a country. That men are on board with this shows how feminised society has become, despite the claims that women live under the jackboot of toxic patriarchy."

On a different subject, here's Doris Day, who could sing, a little.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

On a different subject, here's Doris Day, who could sing, a little.

All, unlike 90% of "singers" today, with no need of autotune or flashing of naughty bits.

[Steve E]

Yes, quite. See also:

You ever notice how many self-proclaimed communists seem to have selfish, self-interested goals that can only benefit the individual. It's like they don't even know what the word communist means.

[Daniel Ream]

It has been repeated over and over to them through school, news, music, and movies.

It is easier to convince someone of a lie than to convince someone they've been lied to. I once invoked a near-psychological breakdown in someone merely by taking them on a car ride to follow the local recycling collection trucks to the municipal recycling facility, where the recyclables were unloaded, compressed, baled, and loaded onto trucks headed for the local landfill (she accused me of somehow orchestrating the whole thing).

It's understandable. Convincing someone they've been scammed out of some money by a three-card monty artists just affects their ego. Convincing them that their government, all major media outlets and their schools have all been lying to them their entire lives is an I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream moment.

[WTP]

It's understandable. Convincing someone they've been scammed out of some money by a three-card monty artists just affects their ego. Convincing them that their government, all major media outlets and their schools have all been lying to them their entire lives is an I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream moment.

True but there is a rational reaction to such things as well. The more effective conspiracy theories (think JFK and to some degree 911Truth) get traction because of the distrust of government and the media. Partly because Jews control the latter (JKOC). So when more rational people are confronted by the idea that they are being manipulated, it is easy for them to write off those confronting them as conspiracy theorists. It's a frame of reference problem. What really gets them in is the more personal, emotional, and in many ways financial entanglement one gets from a very early age from the educational institutions. And if the media can exploit that by reinforcing flawed thinking by presenting experts and such and again, repeat, repeat, repeat, then truth really becomes a function of what everybody thinks. Just like the person you took on that car ride. Her response was to deny what she saw with her own eyes. To her, YOU were the one saying "There are five lights".

As I think I've said before here, most people will laugh at flat earthers yet those same people cannot, even given time and resource materials (I wouldn't expect even an engineer or such to be able to give an extemporaneous answer), work out a rational explanation as to why they think the world is round.

[David]

Heh.

[Daniel Ream]

I wouldn't expect even an engineer or such to be able to give an extemporaneous answer

"Horizons are a thing" is the usual off-the-cuff answer.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

... a rational explanation as to why they think know the world is round.

Severe clear, FL355, over the ocean, there the curve was, didn't even have to be Eratosthenes to figure it out.

[Steve E]

Severe clear, FL355, over the ocean, there the curve was,

Also, form the observation deck of the CN Tower looking across Lake Ontario toward Niagara-on-the-Lake and you can see it too. Lie flat on the beach in Southampton, Ontario facing west toward Michigan over Lake Huron and watch the sun set; jump up to your full height and watch it all over again. There's lots of physical evidence the world is round that doesn't involve the same incredulous belief system that flat earthers require.

[Steve E]

work out a rational explanation as to why they think the world is round.

Explaining "why" the world is round is not the same thing as observing that it physically is.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Explaining "why" the world is round is not the same thing as observing that it physically is.

True, but the question was "explain why they think the world is round", so people who think it is round do so because of, as you point out, easily repeatable observations and/or making measurements as Eratosthenes did.

The why it is, assuming that at one time the planet was a molten mess, is not totally unlike why molten metal dropped from a shot tower forms nice round shot.

[WTP]

Hmmm...now lets do that thing they do in Africa along the equator where they put a reed in a bucket on the north side, pull the plug, and watch which way it spins, then "see" the opposite effect in a bucket 5 feet away on the southern side. White peoples and they knowledge.

[Steve E]

"explain why they think the world is round"

I blame that second double martini. Too much cold and rainy weather here in the Great White North.

[Darleen]

Heh

I'll see that "heh" and up the ante.