Reply to The Warning

If two people come to two different conclusions about the same thing, there must be a reason.  If you're talking about a math problem, it's easy to retrace steps and find where the two people diverged, and it's clear which one of them was wrong.  For example, take 7 + 3 x 10.  If someone says that the answer is 100, you can tell that she added the 7 to the 3 before multiplying, and that was a mistake.  There's even a correct way to describe each step.  When you multiply 3 and 10, you're finding the product.  when you add 30 to 7, you're finding the sum.

With the topics that we've been touching on so far, it's way more difficult to figure out where the thought processes diverge, but they obviously do.  An event happens, and for whatever reason, person A chooses to view it through the filter A (Fox News), person B chooses to view it through filter B (say, CNN).  Once the facts that either filter chooses to relay make it to person A and B's brain, they both process the facts and make their decision based on their own set of values.  There's also other sorts of noise that may influence things.  If person A or person B hears person C's opinion on the matter, they might be inclined to agree or disagree based on the level of respect they have for person C.

Anyway, the point of all of this is, at every step, person A and person B are making a decision.  Person A chooses Fox News because he thinks it's better than CNN.  Implicit in that decision is a relative lack of respect for CNN.  When the facts are being pondered, a person's values dictate what is and is not important.  In forming our opinions, we are acting as judges, and our verdicts are the sum of multiple smaller judgments.  For example, a person might say that it's more important for gay people to be able to say that they're married than it is to protect the definition of marriage.  In doing so, it's hard to believe that someone can come to the opposite conclusion without "missing" something.

Now, the methods we might use to convey this sentiment vary, but the feeling is universal.  Someone might excessively use quotation marks as a relatively subtle way to challenge the legitimacy of something, someone else might choose a more blunt method.  Is there a difference between:  "How's your 'son'?" and flat out saying "I think your wife cheated on you?"  Maybe, but not a significant one.

Thus far, with this blog, my posts have been fairly blunt.  I haven't gone out of my way to offend anyone, but I also haven't gone out of my way to soften anything up.  I know that there's not always an exactly right answer, but if we can get back to the math problem example, we're making different choices from the get go.  One of us is adding 7 to 3, the other is multiplying 3 by 10.  I think that this blog has a chance to be interesting if we can avoid the superficial "agreeing to disagree" and start talking about and maybe even attacking thought processes and values.

I would love for all of us to say "This is how I see it and this is how I got there.  You're wrong because of X".  Then the next person responds by saying "my thoughts on X are right because of Y", and so on down the train.  X and Y could be anything, and defending the branches we thought as we came to our conclusions, I think, will be more interesting than parroting someone else's thoughts.  One side-effect of this process is that the questioning might eventually rub an open nerve.  (I also think it might be interesting to periodically explore why the nerve itself is open)

Anyway, I would love for you to continue to contribute to this blog, but if you expect your values to be characterized as fundamental truths that are out of bounds, then it's not going to work.  You haven't talked about prop 8 yet, but expect me to ask you where the definition of marriage that you advocate comes from, and whether or not that's something that should be separate from the state.  Likewise, I expect you to challenge me: If I have a problem with single-issue voters, how come I don't have a problem w/ "Rock the Vote"?  

Anyway, moving forward, I really do want to get try and have deeper discussions even at the expense of brushing open nerves.  However we do it, though, let's just be honest.  If you think I've been brainwashed, say it.  Let's not say "Good sir, I do believe that your "daughter's" BMI is a tad high", and then act like we didn't just call someone's wife a slut and daughter fat.

The assailant responds

I was going to try and head to bed a little early tonight, but after being accused of assailing both traditional values and economic policy, I felt compelled to respond.  (I would like to note that I, too, work full time)  Actually, I first felt compelled to look up the word "assailed" and confirm that it's some derivative of "assault".  Then I felt compelled to respond.

Let me begin (continue?) by saying that I generally try to avoid assailing anything.  I have no problem with traditional values- the first post in question had more to do with brainwashing than anything else (to catch up, the post in question is here).  If a person believes that students should be responsible at an early age, great.  My issue was that the questionnaire went so much further than that.  I doubt that a person who fell anyplace left of "far right" on the political spectrum (yes, including someone who happened to lie in the center) and answered the questionnaire honestly would be able to get a job at the school.  If every single person in a position of authority is far-right, then how are students supposed to have an intelligent discussion or develop their own opinions?

More interesting, though, is the assertion that things are rarely as simple as they seem on the surface.  I couldn't agree with that more.  Even if none of you fools who happen to read this ever click on a damn ad, I will consider this blog a success if we can at least stimulate a deeper level of thinking and dialog.

The trouble is, I don't really know how to do that.  The trouble with trying to have a discussion about politics is that it's so damn hard to know what is accurate, and what isn't.  I know this has gotten cliche (shoot, even Starcraft II makes fun of it), but Fox News' level of bias is roughly equivalent to that of a beat sports writer.  Excuse the contrived example, but imagine that the grim reaper showed up at your house and offered to spare your life if you could choose the story with less spin- then he handed you a printout from raiders.com and a printout from Foxnews.com (or any of Murdoch's other properties, including the WSJ).  I might eventually choose the Fox article, but the fact that a person would have to actually look at the article and think about it hopefully illustrates my point.*

*In all fairness, I don't really watch any other news stations, and I only watch Fox when my father-in-law is over.  It's entirely possible that I'm a hippie who is less sensitive to liberal propaganda, and they're all equally guilty of this.  Actually, it's likely.

The reason for that rant wasn't to just complain about cable news, it was to illustrate how hard it can be to figure out what the truth is.  With football, at least, the Raiders are 5 weeks away from watching Chris Johnson run through their improved defense for 300+ yards, and we can start to really appraise their playoff hopes.  When they're mathematically eliminated in week 13, we can look back at the stuff posted on raiders.com this summer and know what was totally inaccurate.  On the other hand, with Obama, there never will be a stat sheet.  Even if Obamacare eventually materializes and it's the key to utopia, Fox will run a story on how little progress the pharmaceutical companies have made in the past few years because their incentives have been destroyed.

Frankly, I don't know if we can have a deeper discussion, because I don't know how practical getting to that point might be.  I do know what we shouldn't do: we shouldn't link articles to make our arguments for us.  I think we should realize that the news stations exist not because they're doing the work of god, but for some other reason.  If the person pulling the strings is motivated by profit, then there's always going to be that incentive to run stories that his audience wants to hear.  Therefore, I guess that the first step in having a deeper discussion would be to unplug from the cable news.  If we want to debate something, the easy way out is to click over to our propaganda machine of choice and print out an article written by someone who decided to whore out his intellect and/or reputation in his old age.  I think the better debate, though, comes from taking 5 or 6 steps back and figuring out what, exactly Keynesian means or what the Laffer Curve is, rather than saying that the Laffer Curve predicts X.  If we understand things on that level, we can intelligently talk about whether a tax cut for the rich might actually yield more tax revenue.

Maybe it's not practical to have that level of discussion on this blog; that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be awesome.