Can’t bring yourself to slaughter a nearby village, or a long-time associate? Mysticism can help you believe they already attacked you first, and that the stakes are so much higher than your personal gain. (
Charges of "sorcery" and "witchcraft" have been replaced with "misogyny", "unconscious racism", "homophobia", "transphobia", "islamophobia", "science denier", "climate denier", "toxic masculinity" and "toxic whiteness". Oh, and let's not forget my favourite: "multi-racial whiteness".
No, it usually isn't that weak, mostly because gaslighters do it regularly, so it's easy to find 1) more than one instance of that behavior and 2) more than one witness/victim. I've seen gaslighters (and I include myself in this group) telling *groups* of people, again and again, that what happened didn't actually happen.
It's less relevant now since I was able to make a basically duplicate comment, but I find it curious. My comments are always auto-detected as spam no matter their content (generally without any links) under reviews at Roger Ebert's site, which I assume is some site-specific thing.
The term "gaslighting" comes from a (fictional) instance of one individual convincing another. When people use it nowadays to refer to lots of people saying something they disagree with, I tend to think they're using it wrong. I was thinking of that this past weekend when I read this:
I can't find it in my Disqus history anymore either. I was responding to Michael Vassar on collective vs individual "gaslighting", referencing a post at Brown Pundits that used the term. I hesitate to link it here because I don't want to get filtered again!
Another one of my comments here was auto-categorized as spam. I'm not sure if Robin has access to the Disqus spam-filter here like Akismet at wordpress, but I'd appreciate it being approved.
The evidence of this actually happening is usually quite weak. And so people weaken their evidence criteria to allow weak evidence to be sufficient. Which they do selectively. If applied neutrally such weak criteria would also convict a great many others.
Doesn't the term "gaslighting" come from a (fictional) instance of an individual doing that? It's actually the claim that multiple people are doing it collectively which seems odder to me. I was thinking of that as I read this today:
I strongly agree here. The major problem with gaslighting is that it’s more of a collective than an individual offense. One individual can’t gaslight effectively and is unmotivated to do so unless others are expected to join in. In such cases, singling that individual out is arguably scapegoating.
A potential exception is when gaslighting is used to justify dereliction of duty, such as by blankfaces, but in that case it makes more sense to complain of the dereliction of duty.
I think it's important to recognize that we're not talking about constructive forms of power in this context. We're not talking about the power to help people, cure cancer, create more valuable goods or making the world a better place. We're talking about zero-sum forms of power that can be used against people, and will in practice and on average not be used to make people like the individuals reading this comment better off.
How many ads that say "tastes great" are misinformation? How many people have been brainwashed into believing those ads, and now prefer the food like substance to a real thing?
Where's the division between having been brainwashed or having been sold an idea? "The ideas I've been sold all my life are unsound" is so pernicious because so many find evidence of it when they look.
As for "misinformation", your proposals of prediction markets & accuracy bonds would seem quite relevant, but basically nobody who claims to be concerned with "misinformation" has any interest in them.
There seems to be an assumption that giving the powerful more arbitrary power is bad. What's the optimal amount of arbitrary power we should give the powerful?
Charges of "sorcery" and "witchcraft" have been replaced with "misogyny", "unconscious racism", "homophobia", "transphobia", "islamophobia", "science denier", "climate denier", "toxic masculinity" and "toxic whiteness". Oh, and let's not forget my favourite: "multi-racial whiteness".
No, it usually isn't that weak, mostly because gaslighters do it regularly, so it's easy to find 1) more than one instance of that behavior and 2) more than one witness/victim. I've seen gaslighters (and I include myself in this group) telling *groups* of people, again and again, that what happened didn't actually happen.
And now it's back in my Disqus history, which is very strange: https://uploads.disquscdn.c...
It's less relevant now since I was able to make a basically duplicate comment, but I find it curious. My comments are always auto-detected as spam no matter their content (generally without any links) under reviews at Roger Ebert's site, which I assume is some site-specific thing.
The term "gaslighting" comes from a (fictional) instance of one individual convincing another. When people use it nowadays to refer to lots of people saying something they disagree with, I tend to think they're using it wrong. I was thinking of that this past weekend when I read this:
https://www.brownpundits.co...
I have put you on a whitelist, for auto approval.
I can't find it in my Disqus history anymore either. I was responding to Michael Vassar on collective vs individual "gaslighting", referencing a post at Brown Pundits that used the term. I hesitate to link it here because I don't want to get filtered again!
I can't find it.
Another one of my comments here was auto-categorized as spam. I'm not sure if Robin has access to the Disqus spam-filter here like Akismet at wordpress, but I'd appreciate it being approved.
The evidence of this actually happening is usually quite weak. And so people weaken their evidence criteria to allow weak evidence to be sufficient. Which they do selectively. If applied neutrally such weak criteria would also convict a great many others.
Doesn't the term "gaslighting" come from a (fictional) instance of an individual doing that? It's actually the claim that multiple people are doing it collectively which seems odder to me. I was thinking of that as I read this today:
https://www.brownpundits.co...
I strongly agree here. The major problem with gaslighting is that it’s more of a collective than an individual offense. One individual can’t gaslight effectively and is unmotivated to do so unless others are expected to join in. In such cases, singling that individual out is arguably scapegoating.
A potential exception is when gaslighting is used to justify dereliction of duty, such as by blankfaces, but in that case it makes more sense to complain of the dereliction of duty.
I think it's important to recognize that we're not talking about constructive forms of power in this context. We're not talking about the power to help people, cure cancer, create more valuable goods or making the world a better place. We're talking about zero-sum forms of power that can be used against people, and will in practice and on average not be used to make people like the individuals reading this comment better off.
How many ads that say "tastes great" are misinformation? How many people have been brainwashed into believing those ads, and now prefer the food like substance to a real thing?
Where's the division between having been brainwashed or having been sold an idea? "The ideas I've been sold all my life are unsound" is so pernicious because so many find evidence of it when they look.
When brainwashing is good, it's called deprogramming:https://www.overcomingbias....
As for "misinformation", your proposals of prediction markets & accuracy bonds would seem quite relevant, but basically nobody who claims to be concerned with "misinformation" has any interest in them.
There seems to be an assumption that giving the powerful more arbitrary power is bad. What's the optimal amount of arbitrary power we should give the powerful?