HamburgerBoy: The other side to this is that liberals are so open-minded that when they see mutilated bodies, they think "Eh what's the big deal". Would explain their hesitancy to acknowledge that certain groups/religions/etc do certain bad things at a rate higher than other groups.
M: I was going to respond to your post yesterday but thought to myself, why bother. It is known also about the conservative brain that it just gets better at rationalizing, the more its delusions are challenged.
HB: Nah, I'm just countering one silly argument by JSt0rm ("Conservatives are more responsive to fear, therefore they must exist in a constant state of terror when near minorities") with an equally silly counter-example. The study similarly doesn't make a statement regarding a liberal state of non-fear being rational; it merely provided a method of associating fear and political orientation.
M: I would call this exhibit 1 of that ability.
HB: How do you determine that the fear response is frequently irrational? I mean, before getting to that, what do you even mean by "irrational"? Animals evolved a fear response for a reason. Reptiles may not be the most intelligent, but I'd argue that as a percentage of full respective mental faculties, that they're actually more rational than we are. Their goals are purely driven by survival as individuals and species. Humans have the highest potential for irrational behavior, with complicated emotions and mood swings all working in conflict with each other.
Is it rational to value the livelihood of others over oneself? I'm not particularly anti-refugee, if we focus particularly on educated and less religious ones, I don't have any issue taking them in. People shitting themselves over every single refugee are surely excessively fearful and irrational. On the other hand, we just had a thread a couple weeks ago about Trump's Skittles analogy, where a handful of liberals were saying they had no problem if many refugees WERE terrorists, as long as there was a net positive increase in human comfort. I'd argue that to be just as irrational, certainly emotionally-driven, especially when there are noted cases where bringing in excessive people from an outside population causes them to bring the culture that started the problem to begin with.
M: I would tag this as a second example.
DTrump: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
Quotes from the link to ponder:
1. The Dunning-Kruger effect explains that the problem isn’t just that they are misinformed; it’s that they are completely unaware that they are misinformed. This creates a double burden.
2. By constantly emphasizing existential threat, Trump creates a psychological condition that makes the brain respond positively rather than negatively to bigoted statements and divisive rhetoric.
Pay close attention here:
Terror Management Theory predicts that when people are reminded of their own mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they will more strongly defend those who share their worldviews and national or ethnic identity, and act out more aggressively towards those who do not. Hundreds of studies have confirmed this hypothesis, and some have specifically shown that triggering thoughts of death tends to shift people towards the right.
And compare it to this:
So what can we do to potentially change the minds of Trump loyalists before voting day in November? As a cognitive neuroscientist, it grieves me to say that there may be nothing we can do. The overwhelming majority of these people may be beyond reach, at least in the short term. The best we can do is to motivate everyone else to get out to the booths and check the box that doesn’t belong to a narcissistic nationalist who has the potential to damage the nation beyond repair.
Now is that really the best we can do or is that just the fear response of the liberal mind to the fear of death represented by the madness of irrationality? Can the liberal brain react to conservative insanity with anything other than its mirror image. Isn't it true that the natural response of a cornered animal as used above in another post is to fight madness with madness itself? Do we not create what we fear?
So can we see any hope at all anywhere? We know from the science there is no hope so why all the flailing about on the liberal side. Well, what is the psychological condition of people who suffer long term, say those who were in concentration camps or who fought hopeless killing wars, who have lost everything. Do not some of them experience existential transcendence.
A saying from the German side in WW1. The situation is hopeless but not serious.
So my response to you then as a resident of a damaged brain hopelessly lost in delusion who knows not one thing that can confirm or deny anything is that I hope you have a wonderful day. It just rained here after months and months of the dry season and everything will soon turn green. The almond trees will bloom in fields of yellow mustard flowers under blue skies and white clouds. How like tears, the rain.....
"Make sure they don't charge us for this, I think they want to scam us" <--- there is no logic here as well, but doesn't change the fact that the woman (at this moment) believes what she believes...
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