Ideological Fault Lines in (Post-)Mormonism

[Moksha]

But to say they are "alien to human nature" unfortunately seems to imply that a significant minority of humans are alien.

Could they be subject to a rigorous test of the classics to weed out these aliens, or do their weird abilities extend into the linguistic arena? What about bowling or watching a baseball doubleheader? What about a Rosebud antigen swab?

[Kishkumen]

I was thinking about this very issue just the other day as it relates to the last election and the upcoming midterms.

Take "Defund the Police" for example. That one issue, if you believe exit polling, nearly cost Biden the election. There is a whole wing of the Democratic party that seems completely unwilling to compromise or at least tone down rhetoric like "Defund the Police" even when it's clear that using said rhetoric whittles away much-needed support.

Liberal Dems seem to want to have their cake and eat it to. They want to be able to take radical stances on things like defunding the police, medicare for all, etc and they want the kinds of majorities needed to abolish the filibuster.

Problem is, that completely ignores the ideological makeup of our country. There are too many moderate voters out there to be able to have it both ways.

Politics is a game of pragmatism. Ideological entrenchment may work in specific districts (like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's), but it simply doesn't work at the federal level in terms of gaining and retaining power.

Sorry to be picking up this conversation after it has moved on, but I just wanted to clarify a couple of things:

I would have been one of those people who could have cost Biden the election so enthusiastic was I about the idea of "defunding the police." At the same time I realized what a loser of a slogan it was (any slogan that requires any amount of thought or can be easily twisted is a loser, period) and I just held my tongue for the sake of getting rid of Trump.


Another part of the equation is that I am faculty at a southern university. I have tracked the changes in student interactions over the years. I remember being fresh out of graduate school in the with years and having to deal with whiny, belligerent conservative kids who thought I was a communist by virtue of my faculty status and who were always ready with shrill talking points to respond to anything that seemed to be in the neighborhood of one of their pet issues but expressed from a non-"conservative" point of view.

Over the years I became accustomed to avoiding "triggering" them by "neutral signaling," explicitly informing the class that I was not trying to indoctrinate them politically. It saved me a lot of time and headache. You see, it is not that it would not have been more beneficial to talk through these issues with them. It was more that they were too angry and emotive to have a conversation at all. Essentially, it is hard to have a conversation with someone who is blowing a gasket.

A few years ago, things seemed to flip. Now I had to deal with lefty kids who were exploding with strident fury if people said the "wrong thing" or said something in the "wrong way." Telling other people that they simply should not have certain kinds of conversations in the classroom. I have also been on more than one Facebook conversation with colleagues and friends that involved people lecturing each other about the finer points of their rhetoric, clearly seeking to show that they had a more rarified liberal ethic than the next person.

Through it all, I have come to believe that when it comes to politics, we Americans are altogether insufferable and childish. We are like a bunch of apes throwing feces at each other, or a bunch of pitiless clerics officiously out to save everyone else by excommunicating half of the congregation from humanity.

[Mayan Elephant]

Interesting conversation.

As someone who voted for Obama and stood on the steps of SF City Hall and worked hard during the Prop 8 fiasco, and, as someone who also been to a Trump campaign rally in Carson City NV - I see it a bit differently.

This entire conversation represents the fault lines more than it actually observes them. The dickish victimization of both sides is anchored in negativity bias and in confirmation bias. BOTH sides are part of this. The reason we even call them fault lines, a metaphor of plate tectonics, is because these lines represents the point of intersection of two continental territories of feelings and BS. Kish's OP is spot on "The fringes of the political spectrum seem to be tearing us apart, and taking every community apart at the same time." It is not just that one side is worse/better than another. It is that both sides are full of crap and staging a war of ultimatums.

This Wuhan/CNN/Facebook fiasco is a great sampling of the mess we are in. One day a topic is so unacceptable and biased and evil that it deserves the condemnation and censorship of the world, media, and everyone - a year later all that censorship is just an oopsie. The credibility of these fringes (to borrow from Kish) is gone. There is none. The ranting lunatic fringe are merely entertainers for their silos of sycophants that are funneled by Facebook or Twitter or whatever. Forums are merely micro-silos.

I see this getting a lot worse before it gets any better. A LOT worse. Elections are no longer credible. Media is not credible. The sorting algorithms are not credible. And self-victimization is more powerful than vitamins.

[jpatterson]

I see this getting a lot worse before it gets any better. A LOT worse. Elections are no longer credible. Media is not credible. The sorting algorithms are not credible. And self-victimization is more powerful than vitamins.

I'd say your last paragraph is anchored in negativity bias and confirmation bias. Especially as it relates to elections.

Our elections here in the U.S. are actually some of the most credible in the world. Trump and his GOP lackeys did a great job of helping us stress-test the election system and it passed with flying colors (his continued whining notwithstanding).

[Mayan Elephant]

Our elections here in the U.S. are actually some of the most credible in the world. Trump and his GOP lackeys did a great job of helping us stress-test the election system and it passed with flying colors (his continued whining notwithstanding).

Being "some" of the most credible in the world is a low standard. Too low. While YOU may find the credibility satisfying, that does not in fact refute my claim that others do not consider it credible.

The election is a great example. On one side, the outcome was exactly what was wanted so the process must be credible. On the other side, the outcome is not what was wanted so the process was not credible. Somewhere in the middle is the truth, I suppose. It really is no different than having a testimony of the first vision and a testimony of the truthfulness of a book that was translated from Ancient Reformed Egyptian into English. You have not audited the results of the election, you just have a testimony that the process was awesome and so it was and anyone that disagrees with you is a lackey or something like that.

Saying that there are ideological fault lines around the election is not based on negativity bias or confirmation bias. There are ideological fault lines around the outcome, the litigation, the censorship, the Facebook/Twitter silos, the media coverage, the audits and lack of audits, and the urim and thummim interpretations of evidence. I am not arguing that one side is right or wrong. I am arguing that even something that CAN be quantified and qualified is still rooted in ideological fault lines to the point that even asking to qualify and quantify evidence is couched in these same ideological fault lines.

Look, I could not agree more with the premise of Kish's OP. The ideological fault lines are real. And what is more real, is the victimization and confirmation bias that it takes to pretend that one side is wholesome in defending these lines at ANY price and the side is a POS. The election results, for example, are now framed in these ideological fault lines. See jpatterson.

[jpatterson]

The election is a great example. On one side, the outcome was exactly what was wanted so the process must be credible. On the other side, the outcome is not what was wanted so the process was not credible. Somewhere in the middle is the truth, I suppose. It really is no different than having a testimony of the first vision and a testimony of the truthfulness of a book that was translated from Ancient Reformed Egyptian into English. You have not audited the results of the election, you just have a testimony that the process was awesome and so it was and anyone that disagrees with you is a lackey or something like that.

You're simply creating a framework in which anything can be invalidated just because it has any hint of non-neutrality. It's a clever tactic that I see used quite often to simply change the rules when you don't like something but I'm not buying it personally. In your construct, not even science can be trusted, because researchers start with a hypothesis and, well, they must clearly be biased towards their hypothesis, so that just invalidates everything that comes after it.

I don't believe the election was credible because my guy won. I believe it was credible because I saw enough evidence validated through audits and recounts and numerous other methods. And because about 57 legal challenges to the outcome fell completely flat in court. I evaluated the evidence and found it credible.

Your argument is quite silly when broken down, actually. If I was basing my evaluation of the credibility of elections on who won, wouldn't that mean that I thought Trump's 2016 was illegitimate? The problem is, I believe Trump won legitimately (by the skin of his teeth) in 2016, even though I despise the man and pretty much everything he stands for. But he won a nailbiter against quite possibly the least popular woman on the plant. That's how elections go sometimes.

I'm also open to my evaluation changing if more evidence emerges that contradicts my previously held belief. That's another difference you're not accounting for.

What you're doing is simply another Orwellian attempt at changing the standards of truth, which is coincidentally the game conservatives have been playing for the better part of the last decade. Don't like what the press is saying? Just call them Fake News.

And your analogy is equally silly. Comparing the acceptance of an unprovable thing like whether or not someone had a vision to the very provable whether or not someone got more valid votes than the other person is so beyond the pale of reason I'm not sure you actually even believe it.

[Mayan Elephant]

You're simply creating a framework in which anything can be invalidated just because it has any hint of non-neutrality. It's a clever tactic that I see used quite often to simply change the rules when you don't like something but I'm not buying it personally.

I don't believe the election was credible because my guy won. I believe it was credible because it was validated through audits and recounts and numerous other methods. And because about 57 legal challenges to the outcome fell completely flat in court.

Your argument is quite silly when broken down, actually. If I was basing my evaluation of the credibility of elections on who won, wouldn't that mean that I thought Trump's 2016 was illegitimate? The problem is, I believe Trump won legitimately (by the skin of his teeth) in 2016, even though I despise the man and pretty much everything he stands for. But he won a nailbiter against quite possibly the least popular woman on the plant. That's how elections go sometimes.

What you're doing is simply another Orwellian attempt at changing the standards of truth, which is coincidentally the game conservatives have been playing for the better part of the last decade.

And your analogy is equally silly. Comparing the acceptance of an unprovable thing like whether or not someone had a vision to the very provable whether or not someone got more valid votes than the other person is so beyond the pale of reason I'm not sure you actually even believe it.

And voila.

jpatterson is waving the banner for his side, with all the vitriolic points that he was told to make. Has he performed a statewide audit? no. Has he done a recount? no. Has he done anything other than listen to people that confirm his points and then call anyone who disagrees "silly, beyond the pale, Orwellian, game player, rule-changing"?

There were no audits of any state results prior to the inauguration. NONE. ZERO. That is a fact. It may be unsettling to accept that fact, it is a fact nonetheless. Are there ideological fault lines around that statement of fact? Absolutely. We have a case of that here. And believing that fact to be false may be soothing for someone's feelings, but it does not change the facts. I am not arguing at all that the audited results would be different from what was reported on election night or since then. I have no idea what the results would be - because there have been no published audits and certainly none were done prior to the inauguration.

I am arguing that the interpretation that audits actually happened is based on the same intellectual process as achieving a testimony that The Book of Mormon was translated from Ancient Reformed Egyptian by a guy named Joe. And, I would say that similar methods for confirmation of ideologies apply in contemporary topics that are dividing us.

and..... losses in courts? holy hell. seriously? Standing and laches are not decisions based on evidence, those are rulings made DESPITE the evidence. And, more on topic, this is another topic that is based on ideological fault lines and not on evidence or facts. If the standing and laches arguments tickled you, great. If not, great. Calling that some confirmation of our election credibility or integrity is horse crap at best. That is another topic that fits Kish's OP perfectly and exclaims his point emphatically.

[jpatterson]

And voila.

jpatterson is waving the banner for his side, with all the vitriolic points that he was told to make. Has he performed a statewide audit? no. Has he done a recount? no. Has he done anything other than listen to people that confirm his points and then call anyone who disagrees "silly, beyond the pale, Orwellian, game player, rule-changing"?

And you're the enlightened bastion of "new truth" here to show us all the error of our ways.

So, in Mayan Elephant's world, a recount is only true and legitimate if one can literally stand over the election official's shoulder as they do their work. Fascinating. What else in your world do you not believe is true? Do you drive a car? How do you know it's safe? Did you take part in the construction of the car to ensure that all the safety elements were included? How do you know your bank actually has all your money? Do you require 24 hour video monitoring access to their valut to view your current balance?

I call things silly when they're silly, not simply because I disagree with something.

You seem to have trouble differentiating between someone who disagrees with you and someone who disagrees with the method by which you arrive at a conclusion.

[Mayan Elephant]

And you're the enlightened bastion of "new truth" here to show us all the error of our ways.

So, in Mayan Elephant's world, a recount is only true and legitimate if one can literally stand over the election official's shoulder as they do their work. Fascinating. What else in your world do you not believe is true? Do you drive a car? How do you know it's safe? Did you take part in the construction of the car to ensure that all the safety elements were included? How do you know your bank actually has all your money? Do you require 24 hour video monitoring access to their valut to view your current balance?

I call things silly when they're silly, not simply because I disagree with something.

You seem to have trouble differentiating between someone who disagrees with you and someone who disagrees with the method by which you arrive at a conclusion.

I did not join the conversation to show the error of anyone's ways. My intent was to participate in a conversation about ideological fault lines, and show that I agree with the original premise. I do think that the evolution of the conversation shows that, in fact, these fault lines are as extreme among (post-)Mormons as they are among any other group.

We were talking about audits, which are not even close to the same as a recount. Not. Even. Close. You switched topics on me. And, you made an accusation or interpretation based on some nonsense apparently. I have given nothing for you to make the conclusion, or insult, about my view of the legitimacy of a recount. I do drive a car. I know that there are risks in that, including mechanical risks. I also drive Lamborghini Tractors that I own, and there are even more risks in that. I have repaired vehicles, and I have restored tractors. I know there are risks in both those things, and I do not consider my work to be complete audits of the mechanical system or infrastructure. The banking questions seem to be jabs, not legitimate.

Not sure the point of your last insult or judgment, other than it not being based on any real observation of my troubles.

I believe that the distinction between the "how" of a conclusion and the actual conclusion is very relevant. In fact, audits must consider and reveal that factor. How was the conclusion made? Without also auditing the "how" or "method by which," there is no audit.

[jpatterson]

jpatterson is waving the banner for his side, with all the vitriolic points that he was told to make. Has he performed a statewide audit? no. Has he done a recount? no.

Clarify your point here, because my interpretation of the above is that one can only legitimately conclude that a statewide audit or recount are legitimate if they conduct it themselves.