How To Create A Low-Trust Society
I stumbled across this tweet by American Conservative editor Helen Andrews, in which she remarks on pausing her commute at the local Metro, in Washington, DC, and counting the number of fare-dodgers that could be spotted within a five-minute period. An exercise she repeated, with an average of 22 fare-dodgers and a peak of 40. In five minutes.
What stood out, however, were the tweeted replies, often from blue-ticked progressives and self-styled creatives with many flags in their bios, and ostentatious pronouns, and which conveyed a kind of pre-emptive disapproval of any thoughts along such lines.
“Do you literally have nothing better to do?” asked one film and TV director, adding, “Why don’t you stand outside a bank and interview business owners who steal wages from hourly employees?” Some insisted that an escalation of fare-dodging has no victims or unhappy social effects, and that fares are a “classist, racist” assault on “poor and BIPOC folks.” Others, including lecturers and lawyers, added “who cares?” or deployed the terms “narc” and “snitch,” again suggesting that certain observations are not to be aired. One “Oscar-nominated screenwriter” expressed his “exhausted rage” at such things being noticed at all.
The general theme of the replies, and the air of annoyance, reminded me of Ms Claudia Balducci, a woman responsible for Seattle’s public transport network. Faced with evidence that up to 70% of passengers are now freeloading with impunity, Ms Balducci replied:
Which is progress, apparently. An achievement unlocked.
Update, via the comments:
Readers who poke through the linked thread may register an odd uniformity among the reactions, and considerable self-satisfaction. One progressive podcaster, a purveyor of “media and political analysis,” was quite adamant that such “fake crime” would be “solved” by simply not charging people, at all, for services they use frequently and which cost a great deal to maintain. This was presented as some unassailable insight, a basis for applause. Several pious souls insisted that habitual lawbreakers shouldn’t be “shamed,” even when no mention had been made of their identities. Because noticing routine and shameless thievery is apparently much worse than indulging in it.
Or as one chap put it,
Such sentiments were by no means uncommon, and the thread does rather suggest that one is not supposed to ask, even tentatively, whether such behaviour, however frequent, and however flagrant, might have wider and regrettable effects.
Those expressing their disapproval of Certain Things Being Noticed didn’t seem at all concerned by the fragility of civilised behaviour, or the effects of a large and growing minority disregarding norms of behaviour, seemingly with impunity and with no expectation of ever being asked to behave otherwise. As if such exemptions couldn’t engender resentments, social friction, and an erosion of social trust and goodwill.
Assets that, once lost, are very difficult to retrieve.
Akshully…in Orlando last I checked the SunRail system was losing money just selling the tickets. Fair jumping would actually save everyone money. During the one month that I tried it, I was tempted to do it myself as I could see how bloody easy it would be for a respectable looking person to get away with it. But then I decided it was doing more damage to the system to buy a ticket. I’m an asshole that way. And a few others…
You need an Orlando Sentinel subscription, which even I refuse to get, but here’s the excerpt from Google:
“Is it by age we define children?”
Video at Ace’s if you can’t view on twit, scroll down to Billboard Chris..
Video at Ace’s if you can’t view on twit
Both links require me to log in to Twitter. 🙁
[ Completes a successful level-10 red star run in Hades’ Star, thumps chest, roars at heavens. ]
I just managed to acquire via eBay a copy of Hind Commander, which is as far as I know the only helicopter-focused miniatures wargame in existence. Polish publisher now out of business and no electronics copies exist.
Having just read Danger Close and Guts ‘n’ Gunships I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays on the table.
Both links require me to log in to Twitter.
The video plays at Ace’s site, don’t need to click over to twit.
And this is exactly why it is…well now apparently ‘was’…important to fight the philosophers who tried to…well now apparently did…define away the concept of the slippery slope. Ah, but that was way, way too esoteric for serious people. Don’t take those philosophy people and their arguments seriously and they will just go away. We don’t care that they are teaching this idiocy to the next generation of children. It’s just some eggheads in an ivory tower somewhere. Stop whining about having to pay for it too.
Depending on the browser, the configuration of that browser, or God only knows what else, even playing the Twitter videos on Ace can be a problem. I am constantly bouncing twixt Chrome and Brave and Safari to make stuff work anymore. Maybe it’s just an iPad problem but I also just now noticed that I was able to copy your text which I quoted on my 3:23 am post but am just now not able to copy text to quote for this post. Same browser, same page, the only reload was when I hit post. Reloading after that didn’t help either.
The people who excuse this live in the inner city (the only place where public transport works even though they could easily walk everywhere) and have jobs (or not) which can and will automatically increase their pay to cover the rising costs because said job is government-funded.
The video plays at Ace’s site, don’t need to click over to twit.
Ah, I had forgotten to unblock one or more URL’s. Thanks.
Good Lord, the creepy smile on that creep’s face as he attempts to play word games with the interviewer. His face should be on warning posters wherever he lives.
And this is exactly why it is…well now apparently ‘was’…important to fight the philosophers who tried to…well now apparently did…define away the concept of the slippery slope.
I have had that argument with a number of “libertarian” people. They all had “reasons” to be “tolerant” of such propagandists, such as “He’s interesting” or “He makes you think” or “He writes good sci-fi stories” or “the slippery slope is a fallacy”, whereas my position was “He has chosen to be an enemy of our civilization and should be treated as such”.
Good Lord, the creepy smile on that creep’s face as he attempts to play word games with the interviewer.
One of the tactics favored by trolls is to demand that you define various terms, terms whose meanings are well understood.
One of the tactics favored by trolls is to demand that you define various terms, terms whose meanings are well understood.
Well, it is the first class in PHIL 101 and a cornerstone of all intentional logic. Most people are just really, really bad at it and so trolls know they can make an opponent look silly by asking them to. It’s not for nothing that the Fallacy of Four Terms exists.
Of course, when up against someone who knows how to think clearly and logically you get Jordan Peterson vs. Cathy Newman.
Lest we forget.
Here’s the thing that really infuriates me about that when discussing things with professional “thinkers” like college professors or, God help me please, members of the psychological professions, HR departments, “diversity”-focused managers, etc. is how they use this to play “gotcha” games and then refuse to allow you to clarify your terms should you know better but simply misspeak. It’s one thing to have to tolerate that crap amongst the severely educated but quite another to put up with it from those sorts of professional people. Especially when you’ve let a few similar “gotcha” opportunities pass in the interest of simply carrying the discussion. Especially still when you have been clear in your presentation of complex logical details up until that point.
Well, it is the first class in PHIL 101 and a cornerstone of all intentional logic. Most people are just really, really bad at it and so trolls know they can make an opponent look silly by asking them to. It’s not for nothing that the Fallacy of Four Terms exists.
From Wikipedia:
In everyday reasoning, the fallacy of four terms occurs most frequently by equivocation: using the same word or phrase but with a different meaning each time, creating a fourth term even though only three distinct words are used:
I seem to recall that Foucault and Derrida were frequent abusers of that fallacy–and that their use of convoluted rhetoric served to obscure what they were doing. (Please correct me if my memory is wrong.)
Here.