Also most things worth arguing over fall somewhere in the middle, and won’t have an absolute right answer. It sounds like the author has learned something important though.
I'm 52, and over my lifetime I felt that there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff. And, while I agree with the author's approach to let people learn from the consequences of their mistakes, what if the consequences of their mistakes (or the mistakes of the people they elect) affect all of us?
I honestly think a lot of the flat earther types in particular are basically trolls and/or enjoy being stubborn/argue about common knowledge, for no other reason because they can.
I think it used to be like that but then a lot of people were actually convinced, or people who already actually believed it were attracted to the parody argument.
The flat earther I knew was sincere. He had fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole after decades of religious indoctrination had dulled his critical thinking skills.
Another religious friend became a 9/11 truther and Elon-stan (post cave diver).
For a time, I honestly believed the Earth may be only 6K years old because of the magic sky being and similar indoctrination.
I used to work in politics, where sadly, the goal is to change people's opinions. At this level I did succeed in changing many opinions.
The most effective way to change an individual's opinion is to calmly provide facts to them without commentary or judgement. No insults, no judgement, no snark. Just calmly engage with their points and empathise with them. Most opinions are formed without knowing all the facts. Presenting facts without attacking their ego is the best path for changing an opinion.
This works best on unfamiliar topics people don't yet have strong feelings about. With opinion formation, the side to set the first emotional frame has the advantage. This is why in a referendum campaign it's so critical your message reaches voters before the other side can define the ballot question.
Other things I learned
- Good marketers in politics understand psychology. Repeat exposure better encodes a message into memory. For political ads this means repeating the same key phrases/words over and over again, to a degree you and I would find weird, to ensure you encode them into the viewer's memory. With enough repeat exposure, people feel like the ideas are their own.
- Never repeat your opponent's framing of a lie. To debunk a lie: use a "truth" sandwich. State your truth first -- first frame gets the advantage. Next describe the lie in less incendiary words, debunk it, then repeat your frame on the issue repeatedly.
- Politicians start every day with coordinated key talking points for media interviews because message repetition = encoding.
- Referendum ads are particularly crazy because they have no candidate reputation to protect. They do not need to be reasonable or respectable. A referendum ad's sole purpose is to persuade with the most emotionally resonant messages it can to encode key messages/frames of thinking. Being controversial just helps to create more exposure and people seeing your message. If everybody in the media is "debating" the merits of your message frame you are winning. People vote on the issue, not on the campaign team. E.g. If an ad says X will lead to extremist neo-nazi soldiers goose-stepping the streets, people will scoff at the hyperbole while it still subconsciously encodes into them that maybe I don't want something that risks instability.
- Politics is tribal and people follow the support signals sent by elites on their favoured side. Powerful elites speaking out in favour or against something/someone greatly changes its support among coalitions.
> ... there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff.
I think there are multiple things here that need to be disentangled. The first is that just because science "proves" something that doesn't mean the political, civil, or economic path is nearly as clear cut. While there certainly are people who just deny these things outright there's also the camp that accepts the scientific result but disputes how to deal with it as a society.
Second I've seen an alarming rise in what I would characterize as scientism, a belief structure around science itself where the "acolytes" of science do not understand the science themselves, but use it to reinforce their own worldview in the same way that deniers (heretics really) use other sources to reinforce their worldview. I have seen this play out within my own social circle as people will defer to experts as if they are a clerical class with divine authority to determine ultimate truth. To give an example in a much less controversial arena, how often have you witnessed people adopting fad diets because the "science" shows X is good even though the actual backing papers, that no adopter has read, are much more murky at best? This is an understandable consequence of having a limited lifespan where not everyone can know everything therefore heuristics must be used to comprehend the world, but the flexible heuristic which can lead to a change of opinion can be swapped out for a rigid belief that permits no change of opinion unfortunately.
Last I think this ultimately stems from what F.A. Hayek called constructivist rationalism[1], the idea that we can rationally construct our own social order. I share your own concern about mistakes that affect all of us specifically regarding philosophies that adopt constructivist rationalism such as the family of collectivist ideologies (socialism and the like) which are currently on the rise. My conclusion is that civilizations will evolve according to the culmination of all individual actors' actions and I personally have a limited role to play, although I am a classical liberal. Your last question unfortunately can lead some to conclude that a much more dictatorial society is necessary to produce a result that may itself not be possible and instead lead to an even worse result than the alternative.
[1] I highly recommend The Fatal Conceit by Hayek if you want to challenge assumptions your own worldview likely rests on without even knowing it.
> If a flat earther became president what would be the consequences? Will we still have AC in the summer and heat in the winter, food on the table etc? Its fruitless going down the rabbit hole based off "what if". Look at the last US election.
What if a climate denier became/becomes president? What would be the consequences?
And not just on the planet but more locally: the folks that have to deal with hurricanes or wildfires? What happens to insurance rates? What happens if we stay very dependent on petroleum, and oil prices spike? What happens to people's cost of living (esp. food, which is transported by truck and use oil in fertilizer)?
It does matter because if the former then the people will sit back and watch, but if the later they will rake the president through the coals until he complies with the wishes of his employer, making any personal views immaterial. That said, I think what your comment implies gives us the answer to the original question.
> I think our (assuming ur American) is the strongest its ever been and I didn't even vote for the guy.
Um.
What?
As a conservative-leaning registered Republican, I think Trump has brought the US the closest it's been to self-destruction since the Civil War.
His administration has authorized heinous human rights violations repeatedly, and has prevented "law enforcement" agents who killed innocent civilians from being brought to trial multiple times:
The administration has violently pushed away most of its historical allies, and is going to enjoy the privilege of trying to stumble through the world on its own for quite a while.
The economy looks good on paper, but that's almost entirely due to the current genAI bubble, not any intelligent economic choices by the president's office.
Most recently, the utterly idiotic ruination of the reflecting pool in DC, and subsequent insane claims that it was intentionally destroyed by the administration's critics is emblematic of the stupidity and self-destruction inflicted on the nation by President Trump. It's a small thing, compared to many of the issues, but it illustrates the harmful behavioral patterns in a crystal-clear manner:
Seriously! Every music theory blog post and video is like this. They're going to explain something like modes or maybe altered dominant scales, and they start out explaining intervals. Seriously stop, not from the beginning again! That's not your audience.
I like moving over for motorcycles. It's a little thing, but costs me nothing and is totally available as a recognition. Maybe it's like saying, "I see you." I had wondered if it was helpful. Now that you told me it's not necessary, I guess I'll continue doing it anyways.
I think I may have given the wrong impression: I definitely appreciated it. When I said it's not necessary, I was distinguishing the act from legal acts that are necessary. For instance: a car waiting for me to take my turn at a stop sign cannot be evidence of the driver "showing consideration" since even the inconsiderate may yet prioritize adhering to a legal requirement.
Making it easier for me to lane-split on the other hand is not required of the driver. If they are doing it, they are doing so entirely optionally and consequently it is evidence of their being considerate.
When lane-splitting I appreciated the move over for the following reasons:
* I know you can see me
* It is more comfortable with more space
* I know you are willing to look out for other motorists => if a thing happens unexpectedly right in front, the spot I'm in next to you is safer than standard.
Related; when I'm driving my car, and I see a bicyclist riding on the shoulder, I like to leave tons of room as I pass (when I can). "Look at me! I'm a nice considerate guy! I like cyclists! I'm leaving tons of space! I respect your safety!"
On the flip side, when _I'm_ the one on the bicycle, and some car goes half out of the lane to pass me, I think "geez, you don't need to give me 20 feet of space, I'm not some drunk idiot, I can ride my bike in a straight line!"
I can add a bit of information to what might be behind this bug.
In MIDI, there are NOTE_ON and NOTE_OFF events, for when you press and release each key. The NOTE_ON has pitch and velocity parameters. The NOTE_OFF just has pitch parameter (maybe it has velocity as well I can't quite remember, it's off the point). So if you push middle C, it might look like this:
NOTE_ON 60 (middle C) 98 (velocity),
NOTE_OFF 60
Some keyboards never send NOTE_OFF events, instead they send NOTE_ON with velocity 0. On these keyboards, pressing middle C looks like this:
NOTE_ON 60 98,
NOTE_ON 60 0
Both are valid MIDI streams, and all stream processors should react appropriately to both. This app likely does not correctly map zero velocity NOTE_ON events to NOTE_OFF with the same pitch.
This error can be made for calculating the length of any curve. If you add the deltas in only one dimension, then you end up with a bounding box length measurement that doesn't follow the contours of the curve. It's a misuse of calculus, that can be done with or without the visualization.
These are neat! I guess you have to be comfortable with geometric proofs for them to really pop as obvious visual proofs, and certainly Archimedes was. I would have just started summing until it got close to 1/3, which is brutish by comparison to these beauties.
