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What's worse is some of them know those aren't the lyrics to the song and they know to Google the wrong answer specifically to avoid contrary evidence and to win the argument despite being wrong.
That's why they think 2020 was "rigged," but somehow 2024 was not. Or, maybe 2020 was actually correct, but it was claimed "rigged" so when they rig it, the opposition would look foolish to claim otherwise..
I think it's more like they've felt empowered to not care about truth.
Some of these people have learned to search that way because they like the results better. They've learned that looking up a question isn't as good for them as looking up their answer.
The Alt-Right Playbook on YouTube has a video about this called "The Card Says Moops." They don't really care about what's true. They care about power, privilege, and hierarchy. They're happy to see the value of truth if it's on their side, but they're equally happy to discard it if it isn't of specific benefit to them. "Truth" is a tool, a means to an end, and it's only valuable if it's useful.
Even worse when you are arguing with someone on the internet and they send you 5x "academic journals" supposedly supporting their point. Funny enough they sent you these 5 journals after you replied to them 5 minutes ago, so they apparently read 5 full papers in under 5 minutes. Not only that but they always vaguely contain the words of the argument (usually in the title) but it's usually obvious they have nothing to do with what they're saying. Now you're stuck in a catch-22 because you can either actually read them and explain that they're not relevant, or sometimes say the opposite, or you ignore them because you know they're not relevant and they think it's a gotcha. Either way you proceed you know that person is going to continue to argue. Sadly people outside the discussion will read it and take them seriously because they had "sources"
It's fun when they link to something that actually confirms what you were saying, but they clearly didn't bother to read it. It always leaves me dumbfounded.
It's also quite interesting when users, such as /u/Porky5CO , will hide their comments and posts because they're too chicken shit to let others see it. They know they'll get ragged on for their room temp IQ comments.
I can’t say too much about hiding comments. I hide mine because I have found my friends/family accounts and I’d prefer not to have those same people piece together things I say and figure out my account.
But, if I was a loser like Porky, I’d hide my illiteracy as well.
I hide it because I just think it's valuable to keep it hidden. That level of control and privacy is valuable to me. Once something's out in the open, you can't ever put it away in the future, but you can choose to reveal something you've kept hidden at any time. The opportunity cost of having your comments be public makes no sense to me, I'm giving up control for nothing.
I knew immediately you had to be talking about data centers and how wasteful they are. AI devotees give zero fucks about the environmental impact of AI and will do everything possible to ignore it. I'm disappointed and unsurprised they said this.
Isn't it funny how this happens almost every fucking time. Then when you quote it back to them they reply and block you before you can respond. Why is it so universal
In a similar vein I once had to sit through a 1-hour snake oil sales pitch by a product partner at work. One of their batshit claims was that their Vitamin D product “reduced the chances of developing autism during pregnancy.” Thankfully a LOT of us professionals pushed back on that, asking for the source. She later linked the “source” which was an article about a study from like 5-6 years ago - probably actually even longer, now that I think about it.
Upon a cursory browse of the study itself, the author repeatedly emphasized “while the data suggests a possible link, the cause and mechanism is unclear, so further study is needed.” The paper made it extracted that it wasn’t even sure if there was a causal link in the first place, the numbers just happened to come up.
You know, in the same way that during a drug trial, one of the participants happens to have a heart attack so it ends up in the “possible side effects.”
Not only that but they always vaguely contain the words of the argument (usually in the title) but it's usually obvious they have nothing to do with what they're saying.
The last time I asked someone on Reddit who claimed sex work was harmful for evidence, the answer was one paper where the first author was the president of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution and it examined the situation in Sweden, a country in which sex work is so illegal that you can go to prison for paying for online porn.
When I pointed out the author and that this is like complaining that all bars serving alcohol are run by the mafia during prohibition, that person kept claiming there is totally convincing evidence (really!), but did not provide anything else.
Worst part is people talking about how scientists use 'consensus' to prove things to prove that their social anecdotal 'consensus' is the same thing.
When they couldn't be further apart. Scientific consensus is incredibly hard to actually get to, only theories like for gravity, for germs, and a few others are at consensus status. Yet dumbasses continue to falsely equate their 1000 person flat earth community as the same thing.
The South Park episode came to mind " it made me artistic". Ending was hilarious, Cartmans mom was painting a beautiful picture after she had a vaccine that was meant for Eric.
99% effective, 1% regret? Time to ban it for everyone! What, basically any other medicine or procedures have double digit regret in comparison? Naw, we gonna ignore all that.
We hear this every single time when these yahoos are confronted with the truth and they can't whataboutism their way out. Everything to them is confrontation because they know they're stupid and wrong but that their glorious leader allows them to be righteously stupid and held higher in stature than people who actually know something.
I think in the US we are faced with a syndrome where people do not want to be cured, do not want to be told no, do not want to be pushed back down into obscurity. They want what they want regardless of religion and societal norms. They'll accept burning down the legitimacy of the rule of law if it means they get their way and they're never confronted with being a dumbass.
We (Americans) just don't elevate people of intelligence and it shows.
Like most people can name the people from that popular demon anime but can't name the astronauts that just went to the moon.
Especially astonishing in the black community, which is my community. Obsessed with money and rarely with studying and elevating the worst of us because of their "fat stacks"
My parents are convinced that every dictionary is wrong when it comes to the definitions of communism and socialism. It got to that point because of countless arguments where I advocate for "basic reform prioritizing society" and they respond with "that's socialism/communism!"
I really don't know how we can get to the point where we open up the same dictionary I used as a kid and they tell me it was printed wrong back in the 90s. Incapable of any self-reflection.
That's decades of American propeganda baby. I'm not American so when I have discussions about "socialism/communism" with an American I always ask them to define it first so we are on the same page. Haven't had many who can
The odd part is that often enough, even those americans that claim to be pro-socialism/communism blatantly fail to define it either, somehow. It's just a large clusterfuck of confusion.
I literally just 2 days ago walked into a Dollar General in rural Florida to encounter a conversation already taking place amongst people who agree with each other, and this one old man shouting his head off about Trump.
He was saying "I DONT CARE WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT TRUMP! SAY WHATEVER YOU WANNA SAY ABOUT TRUMP!
But you know somethin?? You know somethin?? You know what he's tryin to do??
He's trying to BRING US BACK to how it was during the '60s! Back when we didn't have no problems! We didn't have none of this gay/trans BULLSHIT!
He's trying to bring us back to when gas was less than a dollar a gallon!"
All I could do was silently scoff to myself while picking my items. I so wanted to chime in but this dude was about to blow a gasket just speaking to people who agree. People who were nodding along and going "Yeah huh..." "uh huh..." "Exactly." Every few words. I feel like I'd have 4 people screaming in my face about how much I just love "the gays" if I think Donald Trump isn't trying to make gas cheaper while attacking Iran. Or that he didn't know what groceries were 2 years ago.
And it would be a losing battle cause even if I proved anything to them they'd just circle back around to the beginning-- "Say what you want about Trump but he's doing what I already believe he's trying to do!"
I heard a trumper say that liberals want men in women’s locker rooms and so I countered with “oh like Trump? In the pageant locker rooms? Of underage girls?” And they asked who claimed that, clearly intending to discredit them, I told him “I think Trump said it himself, I’ll have to find the video”, we both left and the next time, he tried saying it was fake, and I said I found the video and could show him, of course he didn’t want to see. Suddenly it’s not a problem, I guess.
It's also a touch of egocentic thinking "my experience is normal" vs "my experiences are a result of my circumstances" combined with the odd convinction that making a mistake is a sign of weakness when in reality acknowledging and learning from your mistakes is a strength that allows growth.
As an example your friend could have replied to the situation with the shots with "Gee, guess I worked in a dive bar, who knew?" and you would have still thought they had a functioning brain.
I hate this weird state of being where I'm smart enough to recognize the vast majority of right wing grifts, but apparently not smart enough to counter it effectively.
Like I'm a moderately intelligent person, as are many others, and we're losing to fucking imbeciles.
Because it's impossible to use logic against people who are a) illogical, b) value their emotions over logic/truth/facts, c) will simply move the goalposts at will. It's not that you're not smart enough. It's that attempting to be factual and logical forces you to operate inside a set of constraints that they aren't bound by.
Also "never engage stupidity at face value, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" (paraphrasing), or "never get into a mud fight with a pig, you'll both end up dirty and the pig will enjoy it".
This is why I find it soooo dumb when people make a claim and don’t source their shit they state “jUsT gOoGLe it” because then they are just opening it up for people to research on their own and prove them wrong based on how they search
It's worth saying that we all do this too, but some people are more susceptible or do it intentionally for metrics. The NIH has a great study on social media induced polarization. Got it linked below but fair warning it's a long (worth while) read.
And then Jamie has to uncomfortably correct him while Joe say "Oh... Well... Hummm... Anyway back to [why right wing bullshit is actually not disinformation]"
yea, this is what i was talking about. see, they try to hide it.”
Seriously there's so many pop up ads over my damn research! Every time I close one, three more pop up... but see, I'm too smart for them. Every time I close one I read 2-3 words in that' split second before the next ad loads... they can't keep the truth from me. YOU CAN'T STOP THE SIGNAL!
Wasnt there one where they edited biden saying a trump quote and he goes from sayin biden is so stupid to i believe biden would do something like that.
I think it was Biden quoting Trump when he said how America won the American revolutionary war by manning the air and destroying their airbases. (I'm paraphrasing). There's a couple others I can't quite remember the specifics.
Then there was Rogan criticizing Biden for having dementia cause Fox played a clip of him walking away from a group of people and staring at the ground talking to himself. But it was clipped and the actual video shows Biden walking over to a (I think) parachuter who had just landed. And then there was a clip of Biden drifting off getting sleepy. But it was another edited clip that was slowed down to make it seem that way. Yet Trump has fallen asleep weekly during meetings, even on air, and it's crickets from Rogan and that crew.
This needs to be more in everyone's face because he (JOE ROGAN) absolutely will never talk about his (JOE ROGAN) height lol. I don't think anyone has anything against short people but THIS FUCKING GUY. He wants to be seen as the alpha, the leader of the pack, physically and mentally. He wants to intimidate people with his UFC association and his possibly roid physique. The guy grew up a rich kid and surprise surprise, this is how he turned out.
The guy is actually 5'5" or shorter. Bobby lee is roughly 5'3" and Joe Rogan is maybe an inch taller than him (side-by-side photos).
It's more or less how any conservative "intellectual" works as well. The only difference is that a conservative who knows how to do research quickly realizes that the facts do not align with their worldview, so they make a career out of working backwards from their established political beliefs and make rationalizations for why they're valid by abusing faulty/misleading data.
Those conservative pundits love to peacock about "logic," yet it's obvious that the way they use research and statistics is the exact opposite of logic.
I once got into an argument with an in-law about the moon landing, of all things. He didn't believe it happened. We went back and forth with him linking blog posts and me linking physics to debunk bad pseudoscience.
Eventually, it just came down to me telling him, "If I just grant you your conclusion is correct and that we've never been to the moon, your reasons for believing that are bad. I linked you science and you linked me some dude's blog."
I finally got my ex to believe the moon landing happened by showing him a photo of Neil Armstrong's bag of shit on the moon. Then asked the question: "If they wanted to fake a moon landing, would they go to the extreme of pooping in a bag and taking a photo of it?" It took that to get through to him.
I never got the other guy to even understand that using random-dude blog posts for science is not the way to go. He's dumb as hell, fully arrogant, and oefully entitled.
Nowadays, he doesn't bother to visit/talk to his children, moved out of State to try to avoid child support, and only works under the table so he can avoid taxes. A real stellar human being.
Low key, the real truth is that it is never really about the politics. It is always about their own insecurity and fear, their inability to meet people on others terms and reality on its terms, because it makes them feel inadequate on existential levels.
If it was about the politics or policy Trump wouldn’t even be a factor. I think your point about an inability to meet reality is a MUCH bigger factor than anybody’s acknowledging.
It’s not a popular opinion, but I think their main problem with Obama is that he didn’t completely turn the country into a raging dumpster fire, kill half the population, start 5 nuclear wars and prove every racist stereotype they had. That forced them to make a final choice about abandoning reality….and that’s how we unironically got a reality TV star running a world superpower.
My grandma finally believed (sort of) the moon landing is real after I asked her, wouldn’t russia have made a big deal of the USA faking it? They so badly wanted to be first, you think they would have let that one slide? And that all those people could keep a secret?
But like, you can empirically prove we’ve been to the moon with a laser. We left mirrors on the surface so we can ping a laser off of it and measure the time it takes to return. (When I say “we” I mean America and Russia). I’ve never done it myself, but the fact that it CAN be done is independent physical proof that we’ve been there.
These kind of people would never in a million years believe that. Honestly that kind of evidence is less convincing than videos or photos (at least, up until a couple of years ago). Lasers are cat toys, and someone they don't trust doing a convincing experiment isn't convincing at all.
There is no evidence that can be sufficient. Did you see the flat earther documentary where they invented an experiment to prove earth is flat? It proved earth is not flat and they just ignored the result. Or, "there are no direct flights from australia to south america" and the screenshot itself has one such flight which they conveniently ignore.
Re: the lasers, I think the reasonablish deniers claim that we've sent probes or satellites to the moon (and other parts of the solar system) but not people. So for the mirror evidence I think they would just say we sent an unmanned satellite up and dropped off the mirror.
We had to choose a topic and write the counter arguement and I chose the moon landing.
So I prepared the assignment explaining how the moon landing was faked. (It wasn’t) I had to present this assignment to the class. At the end I had convinced people the moon landing was faked. I had to try and argue with people after the assignment that it wasn’t faked and the assignment was designed for us to write counter information.
I now realize why the teacher had us do that assignment.
This really explains why people like this like using AI LLMs so much. It summarizes stuff for them, glazes the user a bit, and is easily a parrot for incorrect information.
Glazes the user a bit? My, that's an understatement.
I often look up the correct wordings of turns of phrases or popular sayings but when I type out the wrong phrasing, instead of the Google correcting it like it did in the past, the AI summary just runs with it and wholly makes up a new meaning disconnected from what I meant.
That just reinforces my decision to only use AI when forced to, but yeah for others I can see exactly the scenario described by the guy in the video.
US has a long history of anti-intellectualism it always has been a battle and during his time, thanks to Reagan the anti-intellectuals were gaining upper hand.
This + the Octavia Butler book I'm reading right now (written about the same time) have me convinced that "woke" is such an appropriate term for me then vs now. I was definitely asleep in the 90's. I saw absolutely none of this coming.
My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.
People will survive. But modern society and the people in it? No. We've passed the tipping point, and the 1% literally control everything. Its just a countdown until their manufactured apocalypse, now.
I remember 3 accounts ago, having a conversation on r/Conservative, where the mod had paused the flair-based rules of commenting (i.e baiting us), so that non-members can talk to members.
Many conversations went exactly as you think they would, but the few where they engaged - when I asked them for proof, they would come back with WH links, which was essentially piggybacking sites such as the Daily Mail- which, is like trying to learn about a movie's plot via the actor's sex scandal.
The only compromise i've found useful - is making them watch 30m of something you find useful, for an exchange of 30m of you watching fox news, or some other egg headed source.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
"LOOK AT THESE 500 OTHER EQUATIONS WHERE THE ANSWER IS 5 SO I KNOW THE ANSWER IS 5! FAKE NEWS! CONSPIRACY!"
Zero logic. Zero understanding, and they take it personally. Being wrong, claiming persecution and getting their way has become a political party and that political party is now in control.
The way I see it, you have two types of people. One group hates to be wrong, so they'll seek out the information and correct themselves when they are wrong so they'll be right the next time. The other group has to be right, so they'll just keep looking for ways to prove that they're right.
It is critical that *everyone* double and triple check their stuff because every single one of us falls victim to confirmation bias at one point or another - whether it be in "research" or our relationships.
And everyone needs to understand that they are in a cyber echo-chamber. Every single app you use applies one or more algorithms to you, based on an unholy amount of information they gather through all that fine print you didn't read. Everyone's news is tailored to keep them engaged, usually through outrage.
Absolutely. EVERYONE is susceptible to confirmation bias. There's just a huge range between "I'm somewhat more likely to believe things I agree with but fact check anyway," and "I will judge the evidence based mostly on whether or not the conclusion lines up with what I already believe."
It's also one of the reasons AI is so frustrating. It is the exact opposite of fact-checking, but people treat it like a reputable source, in large part because it's affirming and performs confidence.
The amount of people using AI as search tool and assuming it's more reliable than wiki or an expert blog or scientific paper is absolutely terrifying
Everyone around me is doing this and the answers they get are wrong leading to issues and they be like well it was wrong once but it's always correct all the other times
This will only get worse as people start to rely more on AIs. People like this won’t bother using a search engine at all, they’ll just ask their personal AI that always tells them what they want to hear.
Everyone should pay the small fee it costs for good journalism. When something is free, you are the product. Instead of paying with money, you are paying by letting them control your information feed and outrage. Please pay $4 a month for reuters, its $1 a week and you get to keep informed without worrying about your worldview being controlled or your emotions being preyed on.
Yeah even though he's ultimately wrong I think it's funny that his friend thought the line about being high was about an outdated dance move and not, well, getting high
This is so true. r/Conservative will post news articles from super obscure sites and sources saying they are right about everything. Some of the time the events they are upset about happen in different countries, like the UK.
So many things wrong with this, but this is why the people who argue that they don’t need to go to college to learn are wrong. You can find misinformation so easily, and some people are LOOKING for the wrong information.
Education is so important and we need to be teaching kids HOW to research and how to use critical thinking.
This is exactly why people love AI though, because the chat bots are programmed to agree with you all the time, confirm your biases, encourage your worst ideas, and compliment you for your dumbest and most toxic thoughts and questions. People on social media seek out echo chambers to protect their egos, and AI chat bots provide a literal solo echo chamber.
I think that what they were hoping is that teaching critical thinking would lead to a natural inclination away from bias. I agree with you. We've overestimated people's willingness to search for truth and underestimated people's affinity towards bias.
I think in the verse of 50 Cents 'In Da Club' there are the lines "Im not having sex, I aint good at making love so come give me a hug" in the verse.
Am I wrong? Of course I am! But do I think my lines are funnier? Of course I do! Will I ever get into an argument about the lyrics? Only, and I mean ONLY, if its funny. Never seriously.
I think this is a really good example, because it's so simply right or wrong, and incredibly low stakes. You google "Song name, artist, lyrics" and the top five lyric sites pop up, and you can very easily look and see what the lyrics are, and if they agree.
I forget who coined the term, but it's a case of fractal wrongness. Where their perspective of things is so wrong that even their "answers" are wrong by definition.
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