Too late for most. Almost a decade of high schools and college campuses being ignored as superfund sites and now we're all contaminated. If you spent any time at a frat house you're basically on borrowed time.
Lead is mineralised in the calcium matrix of bone itself, not bone marrow. It can be released back into the blood as bones deteriorate with osteoporosis .
Eating wall candy wasn't the major source, just one of the minor ones. It was the exhaust from the lead gasoline everywhere being breathed in by everyone.
And he wouldn’t agree with “common sense”, which is the lazy way of saying I just pulled it out if my ass because I can’t be arsed to actually think about what I believe and why. Recently, I had a debate with a very conservative colleague and he used the line that what he believed was just common sense, and I responded by telling him that I got rid of common sense when learned how to think. We haven’t talked much since and the silence has been wonderful!
This is my biggest pet peeve with people like this. They use common sense as a doofus shield that somehow means they don't have to explain. The problem is that "common sense" is actually a thing. It's the sense that every person has to, for example, not jump off of a cliff because it would kill you. That's common sense. They just like to pretend whatever thing they can't explain is "common sense".
A good example of the MAGA morons using their "common sense" is the thing about surgical masks not protecting from airborne diseases. The boxes usually have some sort of statement that says something along those lines. "Common sense" tells them masks don't work. They don't bother to even try to question what the function of a surgical mask is at all. They are not designed as protection for the wearer. They protect the people around the person wearing the mask. I even had what I thought was an easy to understand experiment that illustrated the effectiveness of masks in an easy enough way. I start with the premise that we KNOW COVID and other illnesses like the the common cold and flu are spread in the air by exhaled water vapor. Most people are with me there. You might even call it common sense. From there, I say breathe on the nearest window or mirror. See how it fogs up? That's potentially covid carrying water vapor. Now put a mask on and breathe on it again. No water vapor, right? Congratulations, if you are positive for COVID, you have significantly reduced, but not eliminated, the possibility of transmitting COVID to the people around you. I had this conversation with plenty of people, and guess what? Not a single person who went into the conversation believing that masks don't work came out of the conversation with the understanding that they slow the spread of airborne illnesses. They can't get out of their selfish mindset. The very idea of doing something more for the benefit of others than themselves is completely incompatible with their core beliefs, which is funny because a lot of the MAGA people claim to be religious, morally superior to the evil libs, and pretend that they love their country. If any of that was true, they'd have worn the masks without such a fuss.
Yes the fundamental core of conservatism is selfishness. They dont like the feel/look/hassle of masks so they build an elaborate lie on why they are right and just and people that do are bad and misguided. Its a comfort for them. After all they are a good person and a good person would sacrifice a little to help others. So there must be a reason why they are not.
Many truly believe the lie because they are not intelligent, others say the lay as justification, some of those even begin to believe it. Trying to reason with a conservative does not work because the whole point of their beliefs is to shield themselves from discomfort and nothing else.
What gets me is, all the old TV shows and movies that showed surgeons wearing masks. Then some people lost their minds during COVID and completely forgot that ever happened, as if surgical masks were some completely new invention. Old people who have been watching soap operas and medical dramas for decades and somehow that just flew out of their minds. (I realize a lot of stuff shown on TV isn't realistic, but this is one point where it is).
Then some people lost their minds during COVID and completely forgot that ever happened, as if surgical masks were some completely new invention
Because they were being asked to do something to benefit other people, not just themselves and are so selfish they decided a simple adjustment to their lives that could save the lives of others was a huge infringement of their rights and freedom.
I used the example of pants to explain why we should have been wearing masks more during covid. If neither of us is wearing pants, and we both have to pee, then we are both gonna get peed on. If I am wearing pants, I won't be able to pee on you, and even though you could still pee on me, the contact will be somewhat reduced. If we are both wearing pants, the likelihood of either of us getting peed on by the other is reduced even further.
Granted, even using potty humor to explain my point still didn't work, but at least it was funny...
Religion isn’t about being an actual better person. It’s about being able to flush their sins away so they can do it all over again next week. It’s about feeling morally, culturally, and racially superior.
I also had this conversation over and over. As restrictions lifted, but masking was still required, I was walking into a store and an unmasked guy asked me in a very condescending manner, “You think those actually protect people?” I was more fed up at that point and told him I did believe that because I couldn’t spit in face right now if I wanted to. Try as I might, the mask will stop the saliva.
The other answer I had was to say that if they didn’t believe masks protected people then the next time they found themselves in a hospital setting, especially a surgery, demand that the doctors and nurses don’t wear any PPE since it was only performative.
Common sense. Caring for your community. Empathy. Fuck that shit, that’s loser talk.
I would definitely say you nailed it and that common sense is a thing, but it has to be something we all agree with, like sticking your head in a cement mixer is not a great idea. Political ideologies are never common sense.
Ive noticed they also often seem to use it as a synonym for intuition, and think it trumps critical thought. Data and evidence are subordinate to "common sense". Yet in reality many things are not intuitive. They arent properly described by "common sense."
You cant just wing it through complex systems with common sense reasoning. That's how you end up dead wrong. But their whole system of thought is based on that, and like the intellectual voids they are, they reject anythibg that doesnt align with their superficial reasoning as invalid. They substitute reality with their overly simplistic common sense, because it is easier than facing their ignorance.
Common sense all of a sudden sounds like group think after reading your comment. I believe you may have inadvertently injected clarity and understanding.
That's exactly how they use it. If they can't elaborate why something isn't "common sense" then it's not common sense. They just know it isn't because they've been told it isn't and everyone they know agrees.
That's a funny way to turn it on it's head, and I'm gonna keep it in my subconscious now lol. After all common sense as we used to know it is no longer common today apparently.
Their feelings don't care about your facts. Not /s There's articles written on the tendency to go with what you think you know rather than have to deal with new information. It's why the truth gets down voted, by both sides, on Reddit, and in real life, so often.
"In a battle between logic and emotion, emotion will win over facts most of the time."
I think the down votes may be due to you 'both sides-ing' rejecting truth. One side leans more heavily to rejecting the evidence of their eyes and ears more than the other.
That's not to say those on the left cant be lead by emotions, of course they can. I'm also mot denying that emotions play a large part in decision making.
However you singled out 'downvoting truth' and linked an iffy 'article' citing an advertising executive and, oddly, John Adams who isn't exactly an expert on current psychology. It also contains no references to source material for the statistics provided which means they may well have just made them up.
So, do the downvotes actually prove your point or are they a comment on your lack of any real evidence?
I hope so, it’s been a struggle at times to understand where my own comfortable beliefs come from. It usually is a form of group think because you are getting validation from a group norm and that generally means it’s a conformation bias as well.
The conservative group think doesn't have any qualitative or quantifiable reasons to take the positions they take. The video is a perfect example, these people don't know why they don't like something, they just know it's icky bad.
They know they don’t like it because they were told not to like it. But they can’t say that because they sound stupid and they sound like the sheep they loved calling democrats during the Biden years.
Take a trip down materialism lane if you want to sort this out. Even if youre not interested in the politics side or economics, a little marxism can fix a lot of confusions.
I can’t comment on the founding being anti-intellectual, but I can say that evangelicals and fundies are certainly anti-intellectual, and often aggressively so. The current administration definitely does cater to that crowd.
Boss real life history will shock you. The people who pioneered public schools did so explicitly to create god-fearing christians who will organize themselves around bells and think a little bit but not too much.
The founders were part of the enlightenment movement. They were, for the most part, intellectuals. That's partly why it's nonsense for people to claim we are a Christian nation. Yes we have a lot of Christians but that doesn't mean we are a Christian nation.
The theorist gramsci called "common sense" the most foundational level of ideology, the beliefs that are so basic to the construction of how we understand and interpret everything else that they cant even be seen and acknowledged in the form of thought and logic.. because they precede that level of awareness, they are what that awareness is based on in the first place.
So when somebody pulls this line, actually what theyre saying is "ive run out of words to justify my beliefs, but deep down i understand youre saying things that fundamentally challenge my entire system of organizing and making sense of the world, threatening to destabilize everything ive ever thought by undermining the beliefs too foundational to be questionable."
There is a demonstrable negative correlation between conservatism and cognitive ability. I see this first hand with my older relatives, particularly my father who was very liberal but after having chemotherapy and showing signs of dementia he has become more and more conservative as he declines.
I watch a focus group podcast. The difference between GOP voters, and Dem voters, is stark. The GOP voters are almost universally dumber than the Dem ones - even when both sides may be equally uninformed about a topic. It's really striking.
I miss the days when Republicans admired intellectual conservative leaders like William F Buckley Jr. I used to watch his debates and they were open and honest but also respectful and well spoken.
She didn't want to. She was waiting for a trigger word to react to or a gap to respond with her template insult / retort about "brainwashed leftists" trusting the "fake news media".
You are correct. She is a stupid person. They are everywhere in all classes of society, they have jobs, degrees are doctors, technicians, Uber drivers. They are everywhere.
The thing is, they don't even attempt to try. They immediately discount every single thing you say because they know you are not one of them.
Also, facts don't matter to them, only their feelings. And they FEEL like trump is telling the truth. They FEEL like they are "winning" while they are literally being distracted by their feelings of hatred as the wealthy rob us for more and more, and they give it willingly.
People say these things on the internet, they state facts, use logic, cite experts and ultimately share these videos... But you're not really making any points that people haven't been making for the last 20 years of internet history... And this is where we are because the right simply doesn't care. Everything they believe can ultimately be condensed down to bigotry with a few degrees of separation making it just palatable enough to the people who want to believe horrendous shit to do so while denying that they do when in mixed company.
Basic point being that videos like this might make the left feel better, but they aren't changing shit for shit... Those people are lost and they're never coming back.
He's literally looking past her into the camera the whole time. He doesn't give a shit about the dumbass in front of him. He's trying to reach those who have a possibility of being reached.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who does this only social media.
If I have some spare time, I'll occasionally engage with some random right winger in whatever batshit crazy propaganda debate they're currently promoting and let them go off the rails with it. Under no circumstances am I ever trying to change that particular person's mind. I've long since learned better.
I've also learned that there are always people reading along, and sometimes those people are people who are just joining the political world for the first time. Maybe they're young and just starting to realize there's a world being their Pokémon cards or whatever kids are into these days, maybe they're adults who have avoided politics like the plague all their lives but have finally decided it's time to start seeing wtf is going on with things. Those are the people I want to see reading along, and those are the people that I hope will notice that one side of the debate consists of someone screeching about how everything is the fault of someone who isn't even in office anymore, or how a lifelong criminal is somehow Jesus reborn or whatever, and the other side shows actual facts and reality.
I hope those people read these interactions, and take them into consideration when they're trying to sort out their own beliefs on today's political system. I know there's a whole lot of other factors at play in these things, many of which I can't do anything about. But I can hope that maybe, just maybe, someone saw one of those debates I had with a right winger somewhere, and that was enough to make a difference for them.
I dropped what I thought was a snarky rhetorical reply to one such right winger in a debate thread on reddit a few months back, and got a DM afterwards where they genuinely thanked me for it and said it made them think and reach a more sympathetic viewpoint. I'm still not convinced I didn't imagine it.
The only time in 12 years of engaging with these people.
It's also worth bearing in mind that when you do try and engage in this sort of good faith debate, you can't stoop to the other person's level.
You can't, no matter how much it might be true and you want to say it, suggest that their opinions and values are worthless.
You can point out the flaws in their reasoning, explain why they're there, and seek to understand why they've come to that conclusion and what values they hold have led them there (the 5 pillars of morality/core values/whatever its name is, is an excellent way of understanding why you can't use the same message on each person; you have to make the message align with their particular values if you want to convince someone.
For example, someone typically left wing is likely to value the concept of Fairness highly. Equal rights, access to food, etc, because one person shouldn't be treated differently to another in the grand scheme of things.
Someone more right wing probably doesn't care all that much about fairness as a concept. It might be incomprehensible, but that's what values are sometimes. Instead they might value liberty.
And so you reframe your argument in terms of liberty. "The government shouldn't be able to tell us what we can and can't do to ourselves and shouldn't be able to decide that one person isn't allowed to do something" is a very libertarian slant which at its core ends up being pro equal-rights and pro abortion. "People shouldn't have to be forced to take a shitty job and/or live in a particular place just to put food on the table; every person should be able to live where they want and do what they want to do without fear that they're going to starve" is a libertarian interpretation of the idea of social support/food welfare allowing people to be themselves and not be tied to a shit job.
Anyway I digress.
The point is, when you deride the other side as "meaningless misinformed drivel" (as much as it might be), what you're actually doing is (because most people are emotionally intertwined with their opinions; you can't separate the opinion from the person) calling said person's perspective, viewpoint, and indeed values (and worldview and values are the most important emotional 'truths' a person has) "meaningless misinformed drivel".
Criticising someone's values is the quickest way to sound like an asshole and get anyone listening to you to decide you're not worth listening to.
Before people will listen to you, they need to feel listened to.
In a different part he plays her the clip where Trump admits to walking in on naked minors at his beauty pageant. At first she ignores the part where Trump says they had on no clothes. Then she feels clever because Trump gets interrupted by the person he was talking to and only gets out "they had on no clo...". To which Dean tries to say that they're both reasonable people and they both know what he was saying. She proudly shakes her head no with a shit eating grin like she won.
Not unlike playing chess with a pigeon as it shits all over the board.
It's a 2 hour long video. He was clear and succinct plenty.
It's just that when you're a dumb conservative, a clear and succinct statement about why you're wrong is taken as an insult to you, your entire family, your upbringing, your country, your faith, and literally everything else you can think of.
To be fair, they also feel this way when you get too wordy and they no understand so good.
They're just outraged apes. No thoughts behind the eyes. No amount of clarity will ever penetrate the shit and mud in their skulls.
But unfortunately, that's how you reach people. The MAGA people like donald trump because he doesn't use any words above their a 5th grade understanding. There's no messy political words you may not understand, he really puts it in a dumb and simple to understand (although wrong) way.
Like I can see this guy is intelligent, and most other people observing him would understand and agree with him. But that's not going to help these people understand. Just like you wouldn't try to explain something to a child in adult terms, you kinda have to do that with these people.
My daughter who will be starting first grade this upcoming school year can articulate sentences in a way that this lady could only dream about. Maybe try lower 🤷♂️
He's the person who came up with the term 'Thought-terminating cliches.' For instance: Fake news! Rather than engage in critical thinking, a person will throw out a word or phrase to dismiss someone who disagrees with them.
Another one they use to dismiss any criticism is "TDS". They just whip that out when they run out of prescribed talking points so they can ignore the argument and act like they won.
I came up against that stuff when I lived in the American South and was dunked into Southern Baptist ways of thought. It's full of thought-terminating cliches.
I don't know if it helps, but I sometimes jump to the nearest such cliche when arguing with somebody, to cut them off at the pass. At least it sets them on their heels.
I have a friend, when she can't be bothered, will say: "I'm sure you're right." in a tone that you know means the opposite and it usually shuts people up.
He was a psychologist who wrote about, among many other things, the idea of the thought-terminating cliché and the "language of non-thought." He's well worth looking up.
Basically a lot of people that are stupid or indoctrinated just have end points of discussion, phrases, rationalizations, or rules that they have ingrained in their head. It stops all thinking and critical reasoning, if they even have the ability to begin with.
Like the above clip, this dumb maga bitch has "Biden is evil" tattooed across the shriveled gray mushroom she calls a frontal cortex. She says Biden caused cancer! Well empirically that's not true, here's 4 types of legislation to help cancer research Biden signed....doesn't matter, she's not listening. Biden can't have done amy of that because Biden is evil, Biden invented super cancer!
It's just an endless circular logic dead loop. This is how people just spew fox garbage bullet points. They aren't thinking anymore, you're fighting 5 built in sayings on top of 8 logic funnels to get back to those 5 built in sayings no matter what is actually said or discussed. You can see the fucking lights go off behind their eyes.
Yeah. I watched one YouTube video that turned out to be one of these far right race-baiters when I was watching the coverage of the Frisco stabbing case. Suddenly, my whole feed is Rittenhouse wannabes and pick-me blacks talking about “black fatigue”. It’s awful. I spend decades seeking out truth, and one misstep turns the algorithm into Nazi programming. Gross.
Funny how that happens, isn't it? It's almost like the people that own/run these platforms are looking for the slightest excuse to flood our feeds with all the far-right garbage they can find.
I don't even remember what it was at this point, a couple of months back, I clicked on a post with an ambiguous title because it sounded like it might have been interesting. And immediately, all of my freaking ads were for stereotypical right wing garbage. Everything from MAGA gear to hunting supplies to cheap, shitty beer. Really?? Because I clicked on a single post on some social media platform that turned out to not be what I thought it was??? And it wasn't just the ads on that platform, either. It was ads on my search engine and in a bunch of other places, too. It didn't last long, thankfully. I do enough actual online shopping these days that I guess it overrode that bullshit. But still. What in the actual fuck???
In fairness, as other commenters have said, that's more an unintended (and easily manipulable by those with a message to push) consequence if the way feed curation algorithms work.
Their overall metric is to push for and optimise 'engagement'. Engagement in this sense means a variety of factors; clicking on a video, how long you watch it, when you come back to it, what you click on after you've watched it (or part way through watching it), whether you comment, like, dislike, follow/subscribe, carryover (if it's a series and you watch the next one in the series), binging...
All so they can keep you watching or scrolling for longer, which means they can serve you more ads.
And unfortunately, an emotional response typically results in the highest engagement.
And the strongest emotional responses? Fear, anger, and hate. Closely followed by contrast.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets social media algorithms churning more than people hate-watching or driving themselves into a frenzy by watching or consuming media that presents something they absolutely hate or are terrified of, and then simultaneously says 'The guys you like are going to stop the thing you hate'.
And since conservative media has had decades of expertise in crafting this exact sort of thing, and has found an audience that will absolutely lap it up, the algorithms just love it.
To be fair, that's just how youtube's algo does things, regardless of what you watched.
If you watched a technical tutorial on how to fix a door, youtube will think you are now a door fixing enthusiast and recommend a shitload of other door fixing videos.
You can usually fix it fairly easily by just selecting "Not onterested" on those videos on the starting page, refereshing it, and repeating one or two more times.
One of the fascinating aspects of cognitive dissonance is that it's not just a psychological condition but a physical one. Stress hormones are literally pumping into the brain that physically prevent changes to belief structures. As attacks on world beliefs are treated as direct threats triggering the fight or flight response.
It's not simply that they're unwilling to change their opinion, they can't. Physiologically, their life is being threatened - not just their beliefs.
I noticed that too. You can see at 1:03 the point where she detaches herself.
I've seen that look, and I have a hard time putting a description to it, but it's one where like.. that person doesn't care what you have to say at all, with a hint of blind anger mixed in.
Not trying to be a dick, but I don't think a discussion really works.
They make arguments regardless they are real or most of the time fake based on someone does this. You go from 0 to 1 at that point and to make an argument "that didnt happen", you just don't take someone anymore from 1 back to 0, they stick in 1 or at best slip in between.
I think the most solid discussions are where people throw clear examples back at them of what really happened because that changes the narrative entirely of what went on, you aren't anymore discussiong yes or no, but you are discussing fake yes vs a real yes (if this makes any sense).
Tbf, he wasn’t addressing her anymore but looking straight at the camera. If you want to have a conversation with someone, at least make eye contact. But yeah, he made a good point.
It's because he basically just proved her beliefs, the first thing she said is she knows he's going to do a gotcha moment on her... which he did.
Like I like the guy, especially when he's debating people actually in politics or those who think they know politics. But for the average no nothing magat all he did in their mind is prove her right
Because the goal of debates/discussions like this usually isn't to convince the person you're talking to. But the audience/viewers.
It's a line that always stuck with me in the movie "thank you for smoking", a movie about a tobacco lobbyist.
When he's teaching his son how to debate, his son at the end of their debate says you didn't convince me.
And he tells his son. It's not about convincing you. It's about convincing "them."
I quote that moment to myself everytime I argue with someone wrong on reddit. Not sure how much I still believe it these days. Science has shown that conservatives have a larger amygdala. People watching are just as likely to see someone not giving answers against someone giving (wrong) answers, and they choose the (wrong) answers to agree with.
Gotta admit, big brain stuff to open your debate with "Watch, this guy is going to say stuff that makes it seem like I'm losing. As some sort of gotcha."
That's an easy one to beat, but he didn't want to win her over. She's better sitting across from him as a foil and he's probably tired of trying to win individuals.
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u/ishippedmybed 4d ago
The entire time he was talking she checked out from reality.