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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   4008 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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At times it seemed to be building toward something like "people are too complicated to perfectly understand, so don't get overconfident". But it always seemed to revert back to "this situation seems complicated, but let me explain everyone's exact thoughts and motivations". Similarly, lots of "here's the popular idea about this, but isn't it a little too neat and tidy? Let's look deeper", but then its own narratives end up exactly as reductive/simplistic/superficial.

That's Malcolm Gladwell's standard Modus Operandi. I've read/listend to a lot of his stuff, and he's extremely hit or miss with his research. He's pretty entertaining at least, even though he sometimes lands way off base with his conclusions.

I'm passingly curious whether you ended up making the post on policing.

No, I never did.

Sometimes I wish I were better at reading things "for entertainment" without worrying about what beliefs or habits of thought I'm absorbing. Idk.

I think it just comes down to reading a lot of stuff from different points of view. If you read two books that advocate for opposite beliefs, you can't come out too badly.

Provided, presumably, that you can accurately identify the "belief(s)" that a book "advocates for", and identify an adequately entertaining book that advocates for the opposite(s), without "accidentally" picking one that argues so badly that it only reinforces your prior beliefs, or one that disputes minor points while reinforcing the underlying assumptions; and without "coincidentally" finding that you don't have the spare time to read anymore.

Yes, I don't think any of that is that difficult.

Probably just don't want it as much as I want to believe I do, then. Many such cases.

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