Conservatives have descended almost entirely into what I call “tribal epistemology,” wherein the distinction between what is good for the tribe and what is true collapses entirely — in which “true” simply comes to mean “our narrative.” They do not defer to any transpartisan standards of evidence or reasoning; they do not believe any such standards exist. Attempts to invoke such standards are, in their view, just one side’s way of trying to outmaneuver the other....The thing is, I read liberal stuff all the time. I know what they think and why. Do they have any idea what I think, or why? I'm pretty sure not.
The two sides share almost no factual premises, so they are no longer able to coherently argue with each other. Their enmity is total, and the country is becoming ungovernable. Politics is becoming a pure contest of wills, of power.
That’s the crisis. I first wrote about it in reference to Robert Mueller’s investigation, raising the question: What if Mueller uncovers rock-solid evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians or committed financial crimes, and ... it just doesn’t matter? What if he finds something, but the Americans who get their news from conservative media simply never find out about it? What then?
That aside, it's a hard problem to address. The post two down from this one links an article that gives some pretty solid reasons to doubt their claims to knowledge from journalism, which I don't think they've adequately considered. FOX News may be no better, but that doesn't answer our epistemological problem: it just leaves us with two sets of wrong information. Blogs were supposed to be the answer, or a part of the answer, because they'd allow people with direct knowledge to comment on the facts. Sometimes that works -- sometimes even Twitter manages that, in spite of its poisonous atmosphere and algorithms designed to elevate people who are part of the problem over the small person with few followers but direct knowledge. Blogs are better than algorithmic sites for getting this right, but finding the right blog in a timely way can be a hard problem too.
8 comments:
"the distinction between what is good for the tribe and what is true collapses entirely"--good heavens, that sounds dangerous. I certainly hope progressives don't start doing it, too. What if they started doubting the possibility of identifying legitimate standards for discerning truth?
"Faux News!" Yeah, no liberal would ever do that...
He must have been writing while staring into a mirror. Darkly.
Eric Hines
I mean, it’s not as if millions of left-leaning people literally just chose to believe that a SCOTUS nominee who had undergone a half dozen FBI background checks was secretly leader of a gang rape ring. And guilty also of other crimes, as attested by people whose named witnesses all agreed the events never happened, or who explained that they were too drunk to be sure it was even him until they had consulted with their libel attorneys at length.
Jonathan Haidt's research is pretty devastating that conservatives can accurately predict the moral reasoning of liberals while liberals cannot reliably predict that of conservatives.
the country is becoming ungovernable.
Translation: Democrats aren't in power.
VOX in a box. Quick! Nail the box shut! They haven't a clue. They can't even spell "clue".
The cities are ungovernable. The country-side is governed, and self-governing, about as well or poorly as ever.
The suburbs have a growing problem. Most suburbs don't have the institutions or traditions of cities to even attempt some types of governance. For example, getting news coverage of the suburbs' school boards, city councils, or sewer commission is next to impossible -- simply because the suburbs don't have a newspaper or radio station. Compare a county-seat large-town in a rural community, of the same population as a green belt suburb of a major metropolitan area: the town has a paper, AND a radio station, and maybe a hospital, airport, community college, etc etc. The suburb is usually only a "bedroom community" and all the institutions of civic life have been out-sourced to the central metro economy and governors.
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