The Death of Reason

[Edward Duffy]

The age of reason is long past, at least in the realm of politics. Making a case through logic and reason is difficult and influencing others to see things your way can take a lot of perserverance and repetition. In the age of sound-bite politics most don’t have that kind of patience. Reason has been replaced by something called “hackery”. Hackery is the art of dispensing with an opponents view by attacking an organization or individual rather than an idea. One can also champion a cause by associating it with a well liked individual or concept. Here’s how it works.

If you are opposed to something that has been proposed by a Democrat, rather than take the time and effort to refute the actual issue or core idea, one can simply declare that all Democrats are America hating communists. You don’t want to be a communist do you? Of course not. On the other hand if you don’t like a proposal made by a Republican you remind everyone that Republicans are all war-mongering Nazi’s. You’re not a war-mongering Nazi are you?

Another way to go is to “tie” an individual who has expressed an idea you disagree with to someone who has already been villifyed. If you’ve ever played the Kevin Bacon game, you know that anyone on the planet can be “tied” to anyone else on the planet with a little imagination. For example: the Pope lives in Italy, Italy is a penninsula. Saudi Arabia is also a penninsula. Osama Bin Ladin was born in Saudi Arabia. Therefore the Pope has “ties” to Osama Bin Ladin.

If you want to promote an idea you would associate it with a popular personality or concept. If you’re arguing for letting the estate tax expire and Jack Murtha supports your position, you point out that Jack Murtha is a decorated war veteran. Therefore, if you are against letting the estate tax expire, you hate decorated war veterans. You should be ashamed of yourself. “For the children” is another good one. Suppose you are in favor of a 2% increase in sales taxes to fund projects you believe need the funding. Rather than present the boring financial information and make a reasoned case, allocate a portion of the revenue to a new playground. How can anyone vote against the increase now? It’s for the children.

Hackery is the reason productive, intelligent discussion no longer takes place in Washington DC or in the media, generally speaking. If you’d like to avoid participating in hackery, stop and think a bit before engaging in the debate. Can you make your point without referring to a person, party or organization? What is the underlying belief that your position is founded upon? Can you make your case by starting with an established premise and drawing logical conclusions? If you have trouble with any of these questions, refrain from speaking and do some more thinking.

[insane_alien]

It took you this long to see that?

 

Well in science(proper science not psuedoscience or "creationscience" ugh) reason is still alive and well.

[Pangloss]

I agree that this approach has come to dominate modern mainstream political discussion. It's one of the reasons we frown upon it, and do our best to eliminate it, here, through the observance and avoidance of logical fallacies.

 

Interestingly, I've started to see more observance of logical fallacies in the mainstream debate as well. I saw a mainstream news story the other day that tried to balance an obvious logical fallacy, and I've seen more columnists lately using the phrase "straw man" without simply using it to dismiss an opposition point.

 

I've been thinking about putting together a post/blog-entry on this but I haven't seen enough examples of it yet.

[Sisyphus]

It took you this long to see that?

 

Well in science(proper science not psuedoscience or "creationscience" ugh) reason is still alive and well.

 

But popular "science" is still thoroughly corrupted by pseudoscience, as is every institution that relies on popular consumption. Look at the garbage that's been on the discovery channel recently. They put on stuff about aliens building the pyramids of Egypt, more people watch, and they get more money in ad revenue. The more public anything becomes, the more it will pander to the lowest common denominator. With regards to government, it translates into the biggest drawback of democracy.

[pcs]

The age of reason is long past, at least in the realm of politics.

 

Well that's a broad and wholly unsupported statement to make. The rest of your post simply recasts this one idea--sometimes with a character but with no more explanation than you offer in that first sentence. In a day and age where the natural and social sciences readily and frequently lend themselves to application in law, public policy, intelligence, and history are widely available for and employed by countless public interest groups and institutions--enabled by an increasingly massive amount of electronic media and tools--this entire OP rings hollow. If anything, the quality and quantity of reason in today's public arena has long since pulled away from the unempirical, although definitely valuable, experience of 18th and 19th century political thought.

[bascule]

Politics is the face of incomprehensibly vast and complex systems that no voter could possibly hope to comprehend, the scale of which only continues to expand with each passing year. Given the impossibility of having a firm understanding on the issues, especially in light of the ignorance of the populace as a whole, it's no wonder that substance has evaporated from politics and we're left with little more than a dog and pony show.

[pcs]

Politics is the face of incomprehensibly vast and complex systems that no voter could possibly hope to comprehend, the scale of which only continues to expand with each passing year.

 

Speak for yourself. I comprehend it. So does everybody I know. You've magnaminously admitted to shallow knowledge of the natural sciences. Maybe you should do the same where social science and policy studies are concerned.

 

Given the impossibility of having a firm understanding on the issues, especially in light of the ignorance of the populace as a whole, it's no wonder that substance has evaporated from politics and we're left with little more than a dog and pony show.

 

If you truly believe "no voter could possibly hope to comprehend [politics]," on what authority do you evaluate the process as lacking "substance" and amounting to little more than a "dog and pony show?"

[bascule]

I'm arrogant!

 

Yeah, we know, so am I, but I can at least assert a certain degree of humility from time to time...

[Pangloss]

If anything, the quality and quantity[/i'] of reason in today's public arena has long since pulled away from the unempirical, although definitely valuable, experience of 18th and 19th century political thought.

 

That does seem to be the case. I don't know anyone who hasn't formed an opinion about most of the major political issues, and it doesn't seem like that was the case at all 20 years ago (just to pick a number out of a hat). The voting public is, by and large, engaged, even if they aren't always, well, voting.

 

Has to count for something.

[pink_trike]

The age of reason is long past' date=' at least in the realm of politics. Making a case through logic and reason is difficult and influencing others to see things your way can take a lot of perserverance and repetition. In the age of sound-bite politics most don’t have that kind of patience. Reason has been replaced by something called “hackery”. Hackery is the art of dispensing with an opponents view by attacking an organization or individual rather than an idea. One can also champion a cause by associating it with a well liked individual or concept. Here’s how it works.

[/quote']

 

The age of reason isn't "long" past, but I agree that it is fading fast, and not just in politics. I disagree that it is singularly a lack of patience that is behind what is known as "hackery"...there is patience-deficit, but its a manufactured impatience that extends deep into the post-modern human mind. And it runs much deeper than just patience...

 

Wevre witnessed, over the last decade, a populating of the public realm by adults who's entire child development process took place in the soup of media technology. The last generation of people who came to adulthood before media technology are leaving the public realm (talking the art of reasoning with them). Brave new world.

 

For the last couple of decades, children from infancy on have been exposed to an average of 25 hours of television a week, but most aren't taught reasoning until (if they are lucky) sometime in their late high school years, or first year of college (again, if they are lucky). Television trains thought process...(anyone who disagrees with that should take a look at the annual television advertising budget in the United States). Television, by the very nature of its technology sabatoges reasoning. If we could slow down the speed of image delivery, we'd see a series of random images that are being fired into our brain on shooting streams of light at enormous speed (more accurately, these images _are_ light). The exact same technique and process used in brainwashing, just a considerably more sophisticate light delivery method. The disconnect between these images isn't consciously noticable at normal speed, it appears as one stream, but our unconscious mind receives/responds...is "one with" the actual disconnected process. The visual signifiers of relationship between phenomena that we see in our real lives have been removed. This disconnect has trained the collective mind to accept as normal a lack of relational integrity. There no longer needs to be a clear or accurate relationship between a series of images or sound bites to "get the picture", or at least to get the intended picture. There only needs to be the punchline (or punch image). Media advertising has learned to manipulate the disconnect between build up and "punch" as its sometimes referred to in adspeak in order to produce predictable reactions. Television advertising is nothing more than a sophisticated form of thought creation and thought control (again, if you think that's extreme, look at the television ad budgets of fortune 500 corporations). Seemingly unrelated concepts and images can be used to sell the "punch" product that is being pushed. Consequently 2 + 2 can equal 5...or 12 if desired. Any lie, misrepresentation, or emotional manipulation is ok and effective as long as its not obvious and there is prominent "punch". Two generations of humans have been trained at the unconscious level of the mind for decades of their life to unconsiously accept "punch" without the need for clear and accurate relationship of ideas and images.

 

Nixon's television failure taught the political world a very important lesson...style is vastly more important than substance. Advertising taught the political world another very important message...Branding and Identity Strategy, and "buzz" are vastly more important than substance. And new media technology, which presents information on the web, has taught the political world another very important concept: "chunking". Chunking is a way of delivering content on the web in small, easily-digestable chunks of information that require no thought. In new media, content (formerly referred to as information) is now looked at much the same way a city planner looks at streets. Content is designed to efficiently get you from "Hello" to "point of purchase", taking the viewer exactly where you need them to go, by the most direct route possible, in order to insure ROI (return on investment). Whereas television was considered a "push" medium, new media is understood to be a "pull" medium. Instead of pushing information into the viewer's brain, it is now used to pull viewers into a purchase decision, or a belief. Studies show that web surfers remember the last thing they view and not much more. Much the way city streets move you from one neighborhood to the next. The phrase Information Superhighway is a very apt metaphor. Web UA (usability architecture) is defined by the telling guiding principle "Don't make me think". This phrase is used as a guiding principle during the construction of a site's IA (information architecture) and UI (user interface) to ensure that at no point in the web site experience will there be anything that interferes with the viewer's path to "point of purchace" or the ideological equivalent of the "money shot". Thinking (reasoning) is understood to be an interference as the information age begins to peak.

 

When there are no relational signifiers to connect and ground image perceptions in reality, and no relational integrity in the message chunks upon which the "punch' or "money shot" is layered, and when information chunks are used as building blocks that form directed "purchase tubes" that discourage the participation of thought...well, its not surprising that reasoning is disappearing quickly. Thus, we have politicians that say one thing at a meeting in the morning, and say the exact opposite of it in the afternoon with no consequences. They do not even have to understand what they are saying...that's what their handlers are for. They have mastered the art of targetting, branding and identity strategy, punch delivery, and chunking. Combine that with a complete and utter lack of an awareness of history... welcome to the Age of Receptivity. The Age of Reason is on its way out.

 

The human mind is a very fragile and suggestive thing. And we are no longer taught to examine how we think. What was said 10 minutes ago has already disappeared down the "memory hole".

 

Thus, war is peace.

[padren]

Its just so much easier to convince people to support you than educate them.

 

If you educate them, they may make points that actually help your opponent. We need the general public to be educated and savvy enough and (most important) have the spare time to evaluate what politicians say, that it becomes uneconomical for them to use such watered down tactics to sway public opinion.

 

Perhaps teachers starting teaching politically what they thought was right at some point, instead of teaching students how to evaluate what they think is right in a critical way, and things went down hill from there.

 

Its a convinent explination, though I have no idea how likely it is to be accurate.

[pcs]

I can't stop talking out of my ass...

 

I know. Even so, I'd like to think that you--being so monastic about your atheism--are sufficiently impressed with empirical thought that eventually you'll grow uncomfortable with sophistry. Trust me, the sound of your own voice is so much sweeter when you're stone cold right.

[pcs]

Its just so much easier to convince people to support you than educate them.

 

Not quite PSA material, but keep running with it.

 

If you educate them, they may make points that actually help your opponent. We need the general public to be educated and savvy enough and (most important) have the spare time to evaluate what politicians say, that it becomes uneconomical for them to use such watered down tactics to sway public opinion.

 

1. "Watered down tactics," as you're presently using it, means nothing other than political discourse you don't like for whatever reason.

 

2. I'm uncomfortable with this nerdy view of the general public as somehow electorally incompetent; especially when I can't see net nerds significantly more knowledgeable about or better able to evaluate policy than Charlie Sheen.

 

3. I see no value in your dichotomous definitions for persuasion and education, nor any evidence that an average performance in high school leaves graduates unprepared to weigh the merits of political arguments, nor any evidence that two opposing views are necessarily incorrect or factually dissonant in presentation.

 

Perhaps teachers starting teaching politically what they thought was right at some point, instead of teaching students how to evaluate what they think is right in a critical way, and things went down hill from there.

 

Hey, I'm the conservative remember? Even I don't buy this myth about students being less able to think critically than previous generations. High school education has expanded its reach from 9 percent to over 90 percent of Americans in a single century. The national university enrollment is up two orders of magnitude (or at least ten times the increase in the American population as a whole). Labor and agriculture have given way to service and craft as the largest sectors of employment in the country. If anything, the typical American is smarter, savvier, better capable of critical thought, and better able to translate those skills into material wealth in 2006 than in 1956, 1906, or 1776. So let's cut the crap.

 

Its a convinent explination, though I have no idea how likely it is to be accurate.

 

I do.