Seems like the boundary between “outrage porn” and “reporting that gets people highly motivated” can be gray at times (Assuming the outrage porn is actually honest reporting).
I first explored joining debate team like twenty years ago. Already at that point it was a complete farce.
In order to make judging "scientific" they would "graph" the arguments. Each "point" someone made was a line on the graph, and the opposition had to counter each "point". This led to a dominant strategy of "gerbil speech". Talking as fast as humanely possible to get as many points on the board as possible and hope your opponent misses one.
In short, debate got subject to the same ruthless systematization and optimization that ruins a lot of things.
That its gone from that to ideological nonsense isn't much of a loss.
I honestly didn't intend to promote outrage, but rather highlighting some interesting dynamics in a fairly relaxed tone.. I honestly don't know how to fix it, and would be keen to hear ideas on how it might be tackled. Does my ignorance of ideal solutions mean I shouldn't comment? I don't think so?
"14% of young British men agree that a wife is her husband’s property."
I wonder if this might have something to do with the presence of a minority group in Britain whose religion holds rather anti-liberal, anti-modernist views, rather than the malign influence of some poseur like Andrew Tate.
Some things are actually outrageous... such as the depredations of the deep state documented by Taibi. To dismiss this as outrage porn is itself a kind of outrage porn. In fact, I am furious at Kling right now!
It’s worth asking to what extent outrage porn needs a message of action to be worthwhile.
Let’s take Libs of Tik Tok. Like the obvious constructive take on that is what De Santis is doing down in Florida. But your tik tok video isn’t going to lay out an entire legislative plan.
What it is going to do is remind you “letting these people control your kids all day insane and you need to prioritize it over other concerns and overcome the massive entrenched resistance to change you are going to encounter.”
Same with videos of toddlers being miserable in masks. It isn’t “the great barrington declaration”. But it’s a reminder that it’s wrong and you need to stop it.
Videos of people not being able to hug loved ones at funerals also highlight how damaging social distancing was.
I think there is a role to be played by short form audiovisual content because “pictures say a thousand words” and remind people that sometimes you have to sacrifice to change a status quo.
It's easy to fall into this trap in many areas. If you read certain outlets, you would think that New York City is a violent hellscape with dangerous criminals preying on everyone. You would think that Israel is a dangerous place where people are being attacked and murdered left and right. You would think that all the nation's children are becoming trans. Outrage porn is part of it, but the other part is taking a small scale event and then describing it as a major trend.
It sounds reasonable to make high school debate less political, but why all are the examples of extremist judges liberal? Are there no biased conservative judges? Or are they secretly biased instead of publicly so?
Everyone needs a very sensitive BS detector these days. So much of today's content is about people talking their book. AI is just going to make it worse.
The first thing I do is to discount anything written by an activist. They can be good at raising issues, but they're frequently not very good at persuading. I'm willing to accept some 'deep state' stuff. Yet when I try to read Taibbi or Shellenbarger I am almost always disappointed. And I put that disappointment in my memory bank the next time I read them.
The next thing is to try to focus on good writers. Something like the FITs. Substack seems to be pretty good at serving up interesting content in the 'Explore' feed and Notes.
Here Munger pours water on the debt ceiling outrage porn in a way that even most low information voters should be able to understand...
I meant to write a comment on the idea that "I have cited high school debate as a model of how arguments ought to be conducted" on an earlier post where you reviewed a book that sought to explain conservative thought and liberal thought to the opposite sides.
I get what you are aiming to emphasize but I think the focus on 'debate' is too a certain degree misplaced. It's true that formal debate provides a good model for how constructive arguments are conducted. I think, however, the implied emphasis that a debate will be scored and 'won' (since we're talking about the views of a debate judge) gives the feeling that the objective of the conversation is not developing an agreeable solution but getting the other side to capitulate to your views. This would also seem to help drive the 'outrage porn' phenomenon in terms of making every conflict feel existential in nature.
ABSOLUTELY we should resist. An activated amygdala (source of strong emotional response and, therefore, fight or flight) strives to overcome the reasoning capacity of the frontal lobes.
Or, if you like, Kahnemann's Type I thinking, -rapid-response, instinctive- on steroids hindering the more deliberate Type II thinking.
Outrage porn activates the amygdala/injects steroids into Type I thinking.
Porn is something we think should not be looked at. But we should have the strength and self control not to turn a blind eye to things steadily getting worse in our culture, even if there is not much we can do about it in the near term.
After one sees enough of it, one begins to take a clinical attitude toward it. Instead of giving in to one's own feelings of outrage, focus on understanding the sickness, and maintaining cognitive empathy with the sufferer. (Not the same as sympathizing).
It may be that a steady stream of outrage material is what it takes to slowly start to turn the ship of public opinion by breaking through the huge inertial force of complacency. Indeed, there are already signs that this is happening.
The use of outrage material is in part what got the Left into positions of power. Maybe countervailing outrage material will undermine their sway.
Seems like the boundary between “outrage porn” and “reporting that gets people highly motivated” can be gray at times (Assuming the outrage porn is actually honest reporting).
I first explored joining debate team like twenty years ago. Already at that point it was a complete farce.
In order to make judging "scientific" they would "graph" the arguments. Each "point" someone made was a line on the graph, and the opposition had to counter each "point". This led to a dominant strategy of "gerbil speech". Talking as fast as humanely possible to get as many points on the board as possible and hope your opponent misses one.
In short, debate got subject to the same ruthless systematization and optimization that ruins a lot of things.
That its gone from that to ideological nonsense isn't much of a loss.
I never realised I wrote 'outrage porn'...
I honestly didn't intend to promote outrage, but rather highlighting some interesting dynamics in a fairly relaxed tone.. I honestly don't know how to fix it, and would be keen to hear ideas on how it might be tackled. Does my ignorance of ideal solutions mean I shouldn't comment? I don't think so?
"14% of young British men agree that a wife is her husband’s property."
I wonder if this might have something to do with the presence of a minority group in Britain whose religion holds rather anti-liberal, anti-modernist views, rather than the malign influence of some poseur like Andrew Tate.
Some things are actually outrageous... such as the depredations of the deep state documented by Taibi. To dismiss this as outrage porn is itself a kind of outrage porn. In fact, I am furious at Kling right now!
What is the difference between outrage porn and a story that justifiably outrages us?
It’s worth asking to what extent outrage porn needs a message of action to be worthwhile.
Let’s take Libs of Tik Tok. Like the obvious constructive take on that is what De Santis is doing down in Florida. But your tik tok video isn’t going to lay out an entire legislative plan.
What it is going to do is remind you “letting these people control your kids all day insane and you need to prioritize it over other concerns and overcome the massive entrenched resistance to change you are going to encounter.”
Same with videos of toddlers being miserable in masks. It isn’t “the great barrington declaration”. But it’s a reminder that it’s wrong and you need to stop it.
Videos of people not being able to hug loved ones at funerals also highlight how damaging social distancing was.
I think there is a role to be played by short form audiovisual content because “pictures say a thousand words” and remind people that sometimes you have to sacrifice to change a status quo.
It's easy to fall into this trap in many areas. If you read certain outlets, you would think that New York City is a violent hellscape with dangerous criminals preying on everyone. You would think that Israel is a dangerous place where people are being attacked and murdered left and right. You would think that all the nation's children are becoming trans. Outrage porn is part of it, but the other part is taking a small scale event and then describing it as a major trend.
Outage porn just pushes all my buttons! So do semi-ironic meta-points!
I am volunteering this post as one you will dislike.
https://draliceevans.substack.com/p/can-social-media-undo-sexism
It sounds reasonable to make high school debate less political, but why all are the examples of extremist judges liberal? Are there no biased conservative judges? Or are they secretly biased instead of publicly so?
Everyone needs a very sensitive BS detector these days. So much of today's content is about people talking their book. AI is just going to make it worse.
The first thing I do is to discount anything written by an activist. They can be good at raising issues, but they're frequently not very good at persuading. I'm willing to accept some 'deep state' stuff. Yet when I try to read Taibbi or Shellenbarger I am almost always disappointed. And I put that disappointment in my memory bank the next time I read them.
The next thing is to try to focus on good writers. Something like the FITs. Substack seems to be pretty good at serving up interesting content in the 'Explore' feed and Notes.
Here Munger pours water on the debt ceiling outrage porn in a way that even most low information voters should be able to understand...
https://www.aier.org/article/playing-chicken-with-a-stack-of-steering-wheels/
I meant to write a comment on the idea that "I have cited high school debate as a model of how arguments ought to be conducted" on an earlier post where you reviewed a book that sought to explain conservative thought and liberal thought to the opposite sides.
I get what you are aiming to emphasize but I think the focus on 'debate' is too a certain degree misplaced. It's true that formal debate provides a good model for how constructive arguments are conducted. I think, however, the implied emphasis that a debate will be scored and 'won' (since we're talking about the views of a debate judge) gives the feeling that the objective of the conversation is not developing an agreeable solution but getting the other side to capitulate to your views. This would also seem to help drive the 'outrage porn' phenomenon in terms of making every conflict feel existential in nature.
"Fishback gives several other examples of high school debate judges who promise to score debates in part based on their political biases."
Well, it doesn't stir outrage in me. I found Ms. Lavender's stance refreshingly honest. Most judges of any kind lie about being objective.
ABSOLUTELY we should resist. An activated amygdala (source of strong emotional response and, therefore, fight or flight) strives to overcome the reasoning capacity of the frontal lobes.
Or, if you like, Kahnemann's Type I thinking, -rapid-response, instinctive- on steroids hindering the more deliberate Type II thinking.
Outrage porn activates the amygdala/injects steroids into Type I thinking.
Porn is something we think should not be looked at. But we should have the strength and self control not to turn a blind eye to things steadily getting worse in our culture, even if there is not much we can do about it in the near term.
After one sees enough of it, one begins to take a clinical attitude toward it. Instead of giving in to one's own feelings of outrage, focus on understanding the sickness, and maintaining cognitive empathy with the sufferer. (Not the same as sympathizing).
It may be that a steady stream of outrage material is what it takes to slowly start to turn the ship of public opinion by breaking through the huge inertial force of complacency. Indeed, there are already signs that this is happening.
The use of outrage material is in part what got the Left into positions of power. Maybe countervailing outrage material will undermine their sway.