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this is me throwing some half-formed pseudo-philosophical thoughts into the wind. they are not fully fleshed out at all, but, thoughts along these line have been cropping up in my brain a lot lately, and i want to take an initial stab at formulating The Problem As I Perceive It.
so!
the Enlightenment was kind of cool because it decided everyone has this cool thing called Rationality and therefore all humans have a right to liberty and self-determination and all that. democracy, in its most optimistic form, is based on the idea that all us rational agents can use the combination of our rationality + our particular position in society to vote for The Best Possible Thing and come up with The Most Optimal Society.
except modern psychology, statistics, and biology increasingly suggest we’re pretty bad at being rational, even when we’re totally convinced we are making free, rational choices. companies dump gajillions of dollars into advertising because it fucking works, and if merely hearing a stupid jingle on the radio a couple times can make you more likely to buy some shit you don’t need, then what other ways are advertising/mass media/etc influencing us without our knowing? if we have all these unconscious biases against people-not-like-us, if we can be consistently and persistently racist/sexist/etc without even realizing it, and if merely being aware that unconscious bias exists may actually make us more biased, then how the hell can we fix that?
( Read more... )
so!
the Enlightenment was kind of cool because it decided everyone has this cool thing called Rationality and therefore all humans have a right to liberty and self-determination and all that. democracy, in its most optimistic form, is based on the idea that all us rational agents can use the combination of our rationality + our particular position in society to vote for The Best Possible Thing and come up with The Most Optimal Society.
except modern psychology, statistics, and biology increasingly suggest we’re pretty bad at being rational, even when we’re totally convinced we are making free, rational choices. companies dump gajillions of dollars into advertising because it fucking works, and if merely hearing a stupid jingle on the radio a couple times can make you more likely to buy some shit you don’t need, then what other ways are advertising/mass media/etc influencing us without our knowing? if we have all these unconscious biases against people-not-like-us, if we can be consistently and persistently racist/sexist/etc without even realizing it, and if merely being aware that unconscious bias exists may actually make us more biased, then how the hell can we fix that?
( Read more... )
