Ship of Fools: Keep Drinking the Kool Aid

Thread: Keep Drinking the Kool Aid Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Okay, time to unload on a pet peeve of mine.

I just hate it when I am having a discussion when I am replying to accusations with facts, refuting every claim practically with footnotes, when the person you are disputing suddenly ends the conversation in so many words with Keep Drinking the Kool Aid.

Excuse me?

It seems that the people who make that accusation are the ones who are actually drinking the Kool Aid. They keep repeating accusations they have heard from the Republican Noise Machine.
The RNM has found that if they keep repeating a lie long enough and loud enough, (some) people will believe it. This was first postulated by the Nazi propagandist Greobbel back in the 30's). We know where that ended.

I am very willing to discuss. I am very willing to debate. I will pay the devils advocate many times. But if you debate with me, be prepared. I will be happy to engage with you if you have facts. I have even been known to concede the discussion if I can be proven wrong.

But you accuse me of drinking the Kool Aid, it is you who have lost. You are admitting your ignorance. I will end the conversation forthwith.

Okay, I feel better. Probably helped to have some dinner as well.

Carry on.

Note to Ship of Fools mates. I am not accusing anyone on this forum from making this comment. I find such comments coming from FB "friends." I just wanted to know if you have experienced this yourselves and what you think about this when it is leveled at you.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

It sounds a little hellish your post.

I personally dislike the phrase because of its source. It comes from the Jonestown, Guyana forced suicide by Jim Jones in 1978. My parents and sister lived in Guyana while my father worked on a government project during the period and we knew the local Americans who got shot before the koolaid poisoning. So it is a foul reminder.

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

Similarly, I find that if I'm having a conversation with someone and they use the phrase 'The University of Life', that's a signal that things are going nowhere and I may as well save my breath.

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

Agreed. "Keep drinking the Kool Aid" ought to invoke some kind of argument losing parallel to Godwin's Law.

Posted by *Leon* (# 3377) on :

I've been thinking a related thought concerning the UK's recent referendum.

The impression I got was that during the campaign, the remain side would make a load of claims backed by eminent people in a relevant field (e.g. here's a load of nobel prize winning economists who think leave will be bad for the economy). This was debunked by cries of 'oh no it won't' from Leave. The leave side made a load of claims backed by a man who seemed to spend all his time drinking beer in the pub, which were debunked with cries of 'here are some experts who explain why that's wrong'.

Now after the result, a polling company produced a graph showing a very strong correlation between university education and voting remain. My hypothesis is that a school (high school for Americans), education consists of being told 'the truth' which has been previously determined by a method that's off the curriculum. At university, you're told the method; how to evaluate sources.

If I'm right then this is a serious failing in our education system. There's no reason why evaluating sources couldn't be taught at school, and doing so would result in less idiotic politics.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Keep eating the corned beef.

Which is what you get if you Google 'Greobbel'.

I presume you mean Goebbels.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

I suppose such a comment it is the Internet equivalent of putting one's fingers to block the ears, accompanied by a loud chorus of TRA LA LA LA LA !

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

?

'Debate' is meaningless. It changes nothing at all, just reinforces confirmation bias. Look at us ALL here.

I've been incredibly fortunate that despite all my bias, ignorance, mediocrity, I've had my mind stretched by the democratization of informed opinion on the Internet. Including SOF, which has been part of the matrix, womb of my development.

To be objective, nothing said here has changed my primitive beliefs, I used SOF to refine them, but that in itself was part of a larger educational process.

There IS progress. The cult I was in effectively for 30 years was finally deconstructed by imported higher education, brought in to refine the cult's theology (like my motivation in coming here), it worked too well! That coincided with the rise of the Internet and postmodern evangelicalism. From America. Whence comes good despite the cost in evil.

I had a pulse of being moved just then remembering the recent breakthrough I experienced in community here in Hell, because I was able to deconstruct what had gone wrong on my side in my relationship with mousethief. Progress.

The world, creation, with all its meaningless collateral, is bigger than me and is evolving and before I got too old I've been positively touched by that. I am incredibly privileged in that. That is happening in God's Absence.

I've had a hovering, gelling sense for a week now that the bigness of God, the big-mindedness, immanence in infinite creation from eternity, means that His interaction with each of us after death will necessarily be one on one, perfectly personal as well as in relationships, group, communal, global, cosmic. That will happen in God's Presence. To at least every sapient being 'down' to every sparrow at least that will have lived on this infinitesimal world in eternity. As it has happened infinitely for the absolutely certain greatest objective fact: of eternity.

Chilcot, Brexit, Trump, Dallas - St. Paul - Baton Rouge ... all will be well. No debate.

Posted by Jack o' the Green (# 11091) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Including SOF, which has been part of the matrix, womb of my development.

"Ship of Fools.com - the womb of Christian development and unrest since 1998."

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Note to Ship of Fools mates. I am not accusing anyone on this forum from making this comment. I find such comments coming from FB "friends." I just wanted to know if you have experienced this yourselves and what you think about this when it is leveled at you.

This is one reason I don't discuss politics on facebook. When it comes to political discussion, facebook is great as an echo chamber, but not so great as a means of actual dialogue.

I use facebook mainly to keep up with family and old friends. I rarely even "like" political postings, even if I agree with them.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

I watched an interesting program about optical illusions once. The premise was that the human brain is wired above all for survival. Optical illusions frequently illustrate how our brains miss certain realities because those realities are not helpful in the quest to survive.

I kind of wonder if this is why debate is frequently ineffective in changing hearts and minds. Our brains may not be wired like the science fiction robot who goes up in smoke when it encounters a logical inconsistency. We know what has kept us safe in the past, and if someone tells us something different, our brain ignores it because its experience so far has been that the old way of thinking kept us alive. Telling someone the facts does far less than having them experience something out of their safe area and having it turn out differently than they anticipated.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

Here is an article that pretty much explains the premise of the optical illusion program, using many of the same illusions.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

In classical debate terms you have two sides reacting to a proposition, one side taking the pro, the other side taking the con. Debaters will try to reason together to reach an understanding.

This is much different from arguing where to sides are dug in and there is no possibility of movement.

When I say debate, I am referring to the former, not the latter.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Debate is about winning unless it's Socratic: cooperative.

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
In classical debate terms you have two sides reacting to a proposition, one side taking the pro, the other side taking the con. Debaters will try to reason together to reach an understanding.

This is much different from arguing where to sides are dug in and there is no possibility of movement.

When I say debate, I am referring to the former, not the latter.

Yup. Sounds like the American political scene to me.

I think many (myself included) would do well to repeat Debate 101. You know, the class where you are arbitrarily assigned a point of view and where you have to give persuasive and hopefully sound reasons to support it. It's the intellectual version of "Walk a Mile in Someone Else's Shoes". It might not change minds but it might open some understanding.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Debaters will try to reason together to reach an understanding.

That has never been my experience of debate, including those debate classes in school. My experience is that debaters try to convince others that they have the stronger argument and are right.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

One concept of debate is that it is a battle, and there must be a winner and a loser. Another concept of debate is that is about reaching a consensus. The former is a high school sport and the latter is (in theory) how a body politic does its work.

High school debating may be an unusually poor preparation for the work of legislators or diplomats.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Leon:

quote:
Now after the result, a polling company produced a graph showing a very strong correlation between university education and voting remain. My hypothesis is that a school (high school for Americans), education consists of being told 'the truth' which has been previously determined by a method that's off the curriculum. At university, you're told the method; how to evaluate sources.

If I'm right then this is a serious failing in our education system. There's no reason why evaluating sources couldn't be taught at school, and doing so would result in less idiotic politics.

It is taught in our education system, in fact: critical thinking and how to evaluate information sources are both in the current National Curriculum. There isn't as much time to cover these things as there ought to be, because of all the time the teachers have to spend teaching the children to pass tests, but they are in there.

The younger members of the electorate were more likely to vote Remain. They are the ones who were taught critical thinking and information literacy at school. Older people would probably not have learned these skills unless they went to university, as you say.

And however good your critical thinking skills may be, forty years of being told the EU is an evil Franco-German plot to rule the world/a pointless waste of money/the source of all the problems in this country/all of the above by every tabloid in the country is bound to have some effect. People forget things they were taught at school.

Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Debate is about winning unless it's Socratic: cooperative.

Ironic since Socrates definitely seems to me to have been in it to win it.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Yeah Gwai, remind me of how that worked out for him?

Western (Anglic) government and courtroom procedure is literally Satanic: adversarial.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Debate is about winning unless it's Socratic: cooperative.
Ironic since Socrates definitely seems to me to have been in it to win it.

And rather famously "drank the Kool Aid".

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Perfect.

Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :

Martin, I'd say he won the debates handily. He's still famous for being wise and a good debater now. He's not the one who'd take that over a longer life. And it was a choice. If he'd wanted to drink the counsel's kool-aid, he could have apologized at his trial and not been killed.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Aye Gwai, winning cost him his life. A fascinatingly alien process at least once removed through Plato, in a culture that gave us the disturbingly powerful Theban plays. Weird and wonderful, an early clash of the ongoing rational waking hypnagogia and credulous dreaming hypnopompia of humanity, I'd love to see a deconstruction of it all and a reconstruction in contemporary terms. And an all embracing metanarrative.

Comforting the afflicted by afflicting the comfortable?

I must read The Last of the Wine and The Mask of Apollo at least, by Mary Renault, may be they shed some light? I loved The King Must Die, a brilliant deconstruction of myth, stripping away the dream stuff, getting down to basics. That feels too reductionist alone and I acknowledge the need for a phenomenological approach too.

And that.

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

I can't recommend highly enough Donald Kagan's
The Peloponnesian War

It's a big book but it thoroughly explores the dilemma both the Spartans and the Athenians were in.

Posted by Humble Servant (# 18391) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Leon:
quote:

If I'm right then this is a serious failing in our education system. There's no reason why evaluating sources couldn't be taught at school, and doing so would result in less idiotic politics.
It is taught in our education system, in fact: critical thinking and how to evaluate information sources are both in the current National Curriculum.

Critical thinking is not what we lack. We need to understand rhetoric. We need to understand how we are being played and what strategies the debaters are using to sway our opinion. Only armed with that understanding can we step back and make an open minded assessment of the facts. We had debates at school too, but we never studied how to argue a case in a convincing way.

Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :

quote:
Originally posted by *Leon*:

If I'm right then this is a serious failing in our education system. There's no reason why evaluating sources couldn't be taught at school, and doing so would result in less idiotic politics.

That doesn't match my experience of school. History in particular was all about source evaluation and spotting bias. The problem is more likely to be that people who don't make it to university simply don't have much experience of working with abstract principles and following arguments, so are likely to place more value on received wisdom and their own personal experience.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Humble Servant:

quote:
Critical thinking is not what we lack. We need to understand rhetoric. We need to understand how we are being played and what strategies the debaters are using to sway our opinion.

Actually, critical thinking is exactly what we lack. Check out the definition of critical thinking in the first paragraph... it includes evaluating other people's arguments as well as constructing valid arguments yourself.

And information literacy is all about evaluating the reliability of your sources and cross-checking facts. Put these two things together (as the National Curriculum, in theory, does) and you should get an electorate who can see through the empty promises of snake-oil salesmen.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

But then I'm not sure if politics just doesn't have an irrational basis anyway. Do I like Corbyn simply because of his arguments? I don't think so, they are a factor, but I have a gut reaction to him in various ways, which are positive, but others have negative reactions.

Same with Blair - in the early days, he was Mr Smooth, a very good orator, with some vague plausible ideas. But he was seductive.

Posted by Teekeey Misha (# 18604) on :

The phrase that yanks my chain, grinds my gears, gets my goat and [insert present indicative verbs my apposite noun of your choice] is...

"End of."

"A is true. End of," or "B is false. End of." It means "I believe this but I haven't got a decent argument to defend my proposition, therefore I am not able / willing to discuss it."

I also disapprove of its arrogance. "Who gave YOU the right to determine that there shall be no further discussion?"

Dismissing others by my perception of their intelligence is not my wont. Unless they use the "End of" terminus, in which case I to say, "Wow. When you changed planes at Ignorant International you left your brain on the carousel and picked up a whole bag of stupid instead."

I only mention this because I heard it in conversation this very morning.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

quetzalcoatl:

quote:
But then I'm not sure if politics just doesn't have an irrational basis anyway. Do I like Corbyn simply because of his arguments? I don't think so, they are a factor, but I have a gut reaction to him in various ways, which are positive, but others have negative reactions.

You could be right. I get the impression a lot of people voted Leave in the referendum for emotional reasons, or because the Leave campaign had better slogans. Don't give in to Project Fear. Let's Fund Our NHS. Take Back Control. And, of course, the infamous Breaking Point.

I think 'gut reaction' does have a place in deciding who to vote for, because politics nowadays is so complicated that election manifestos are basically a wish-list of things the party would like to do if they get in power. Once they're actually in power they usually find that their plans have to be revised or even abandoned completely, but the manifesto isn't completely useless; it tells you what the party in question thinks is important. Then your gut (if functioning correctly) tells you whether the leader of the party in question is someone who can be trusted to try and implement as many of the manifesto promises as possible once in power.

My gut told me that I wouldn't buy a second-hand car from David Cameron. But I wouldn't buy a new car from Nigel Farrago or Boris Johnson.

(I gather Jeremy Corbyn usually travels by bus).

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

I suspect that many problems in this area arise from disputants confusing facts with ethical premises.

David Hume showed us back in the eighteenth century that it is impossible to derive an “ought” from an “is”.

A rational ethic is as fanciful as a clockwork orange.

You can agree or disagree with an ethical premise, and you can draw more or less rational conclusions from it, but you cannot logically prove or disprove it.

If A believes it to be self-evidently true that capital punishment is always wrong, and B believes it to be self-evidently true that capital punishment is always the only just penalty for certain crimes, then A is wasting their breath producing statistics, however factual, that capital punishment fails to deter, and B is wasting their breath producing statistics, however factual, of the crimes against humanity committed by the Nuremberg defendants who were hanged.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

There are a host of phrases used to attempt to close down debate. Popular lately has been "precious snowflake", which generally means "I don't want to have to consider your valid concern", "butthurt" which means "I'm painting my disdain for you and pleasure in your distress or disappointment as proof of my moral superiority" and "people think the world owes them a living" which means "Don't expect me to give a shit about your difficulty finding employment".

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:

quote:
Originally posted by *Leon*:

If I'm right then this is a serious failing in our education system. There's no reason why evaluating sources couldn't be taught at school, and doing so would result in less idiotic politics.
That doesn't match my experience of school. History in particular was all about source evaluation and spotting bias. The problem is more likely to be that people who don't make it to university simply don't have much experience of working with abstract principles and following arguments, so are likely to place more value on received wisdom and their own personal experience.

Not any more it ain't. There's been a strong push from certain parties back towards learning dates and kings and queens. Is there a sinister motive to this?

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
There are a host of phrases used to attempt to close down debate. Popular lately has been "precious snowflake", which generally means "I don't want to have to consider your valid concern", "butthurt" which means "I'm painting my disdain for you and pleasure in your distress or disappointment as proof of my moral superiority" and "people think the world owes them a living" which means "Don't expect me to give a shit about your difficulty finding employment".

Amen, amen, and amen.

I find "butthurt" to be particularly loathsome, given its obvious roots in high school locker room type homophobia.

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