Thread by @KesterRatcliff

One thing I've learned in the last year is- extremely little and few of people's misjudgements are due to bad intentions, almost all of our misjudgements are due to ignorance, and, what's much worse, ignorance of the extent of our ignorance..

and how we inevitably live with more or less statistical sampling biases due to having singular positions in dynamic and quite modular networks of information distribution + circulation

I'd now guess/ estimate that bad will as a factor in misjudgements in general is about 2%

Unless you proactively look around the network and are aware of your own position in the network and consciously try to adjust for it, your chance of not unintentionally having a statistically biased sampling of information presented to you is zero.

Even if you apply highly rational individual cognitive processes to a biased sampling of information due to not accounting for your position in the social network + how that biases what you see, hear and read and then proactively looking around, you will end up with misjudgements

When people just passively consume info presented to them in their social media feeds and their choices of broadcast media partly due to their social background and upbringing, they only see one sampling of information from one position in the network. I.e. no independence.

To have an independent view means being able to stand back from the sampling of information and the judgements of your primary position in the network and what you're presented with by your direct associates..

and consciously filter and check how you and your direct associates got that particular sampling of info and check on the social and individual cognitive processes that led you to those collective judgements. Comparisons help but even having comparisons is not enough on its own.

All sources and means of knowledge are imperfectly reliable. I think that's the most important thing I've learned in 36 years. Also, excessively discounting the value of generally less reliable means of knowledge more than is realistic will increase your error rate and margin.

Slight hangovers always made me philosophical in the mornings. ;-)

P.s. I remember a certain Assadist propagandist last year was particularly outraged that I disbelieved her claim to be "independent". It stuck in my mind because her anger about that, surprisingly to me then, seemed genuine and not just a performance.

I now think that probably what she meant by 'independent' was- she is an absolutely other conscious being independently from her direct associates. That's true, but not the relevant kind of independence when evaluating whether someone's judgements are more reliable than average.

The relevant kind of independence for evaluating the reliability of someone's judgements is their ability to be independent from themselves, i.e. aware of their primary position in the network + the sampling biases of that, and consciously + proactively looking around + checking.

The former, unrealistic and excessively individualistic sense of independence I guess comes from overcompensating for a previous lack of feeling seen, understood and loved, i.e. narcissism.

I think it's a pattern that a lot of the Assadist and other pro-authoritarian propaganda repeaters seem to have originated in high social status positions but have lost that, so they're reacting and overcompensating. Adorno hypothesized that the authoritarian personality type..

develops from social conditioning by parents who are excessively anxious about gaining or conserving social status so they're afraid when their children do anything that violates externally imposed norms, and unwilling to risk criticising those norms..

So they react angrily out of fear of losing status because of their children's norm violations, so the children learn to be afraid of angry reactions if they violate or even question externally imposed social norms. That's the authoritarian personality type.

It's quite similar to narcissistic personality development in that it's an overcompensatory response to a lack of feeling seen and loved as an independent being unconditional on one's parents needs and desires for themselves, i.e. not being regarded instrumentally but as a person

So I guess her outrage was reacting to a genuine hurt that she hasn't felt recognized as an independent conscious being by people who were important to her before. It's also a feature of narcissistic and authoritarian personalities to regard and treat others instrumentally.

So the hurt and hurting gets transmitted across each generation and from generation to generation, and hardly anyone ever understands the injustice of not regarding and treating each other fully as persons.
The Assadist propagandist in my example, she also claims to be Christian

So, in Christian symbolic terms, the remedy for this spiritual and moral injury and reactive bad habit of treating others instrumentally is Eucharistic Adoration. Yes it's a sacred mystery, not immediately apparent what it means, but that's part of how it works so well.

Adoration shows us a visible sign of the invisible grace of understanding that in each other person we see the face of the universal Other, "in which we all live and move and have our being", the pattern of relationships that accords to how everything really exists, relationally.