something's been on my mind lately, and i want to talk about it. this could go long, and i might end up splitting it into multiple threads or something, but here goes.

i recently rewatched a last week tonight episode from last month or so, talking about rightwingers' response to the coronavirus, and in particular, the idea that we should reopen the country ASAP because the damage to the economy is too great to bear.

oliver plays a clip where glenn beck says he would rather die than let his grandchildren become "slave[s] to debt", and oliver of course criticized this idea on numerous grounds, not the least of which being that millions of people dying is also bad for the economy.

but shortsightedness is nothing new to conservatism, and oliver's points, while valid, don't really address what bugged me so much about beck's words, which is the idea that he cares so much about his grandchildren's future that he'd be willing to die for them.

to put it frankly, i have believed for a very long time that conservative philosophy as a whole simply does not care about my generation or any generation that follows mine. i have long believed they would be perfectly content letting all of humanity die with them.

i have believed this because the political establishment has, for my entire lifetime, been continuously faced with a choice - whether or not to allow corporations to kill the world with pollution - and virtually all republicans, and depressingly many democrats, have allowed it.

i grew up in a world ronald reagan destroyed.

so when faced with people like ben shapiro who argue against even the weakest, most insignificant forms of environmental regulation, i came to this conclusion:

"they know they're killing the world. they simply don't care."

ben shapiro is a lot of terrible things, but i honestly don't think he's a fool. for a while, i did think he's a liar. but i'm starting to wonder whether that's really what's going on. and as i dig at my thoughts here, i think the truth is more subtle.

i think the real problem here is what i've been dancing around discussing for a long time, what i've seen others touch on but not really dive into with the depth i feel we need. the real problem is that our society lacks a coherent political epistemology.

epistemology, for those unaware, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. while there are a lot of concepts in that field, i'll be focusing on one key epistemic question for the purpose of this discussion:

"How do you know?"

in contemporary american politics, it's taken for granted that every news outlet has a bias in favor of some philosophy or another. this is not in itself bad - every writer does have a bias, that's just human nature - but what we've done with that knowledge is deeply dangerous.

we have what i've taken to calling "epistemic bubbles" - subsets of society whose members trust only each other for political news (and, implicitly, political ideology). i think the internet has caused these groups to split into narrower and more insular groups than ever before.

so the ultimate question, "How do you know?", has become irrelevant today - because if a fact conforms to what is known in your bubble, you don't question it; and if it doesn't, you don't entertain it. the validity is determined entirely by the contours of the bubble.

i think glenn beck cares very much about his grandchildren's wellbeing. i think the idea that politicians he has voted for have doomed those grandchildren by enacting policies which will soon leave earth uninhabitable has never seriously crossed his mind.

because, in his political circles, the idea has long been rendered beneath consideration. he's part of a community where that isn't seen as an issue.

and we rely on our community to guide our beliefs a lot more than we usually realize.

on twitter i see news about police violence against black americans retweeted so often that there has lately been discourse about avoiding showing actual videos, specifically because they're so upsetting. offline i see "blue lives matter" bumper stickers on cars all the time.

do you think the people who buy "blue lives matter" bumper stickers have the same exposure to news stories about police violence against black people that i have? of course not. they likely see news stories about violent criminals, gangs, immigrants, etc.

our political and ethical ideologies (what i like to call our "moral center") guide what sources for news we seek out, and trust; and in turn, those sources guide what we believe. it's a feedback loop of ideology to which we are all prone.

a little while back i wrote a short story that sought to illustrate this idea. it's not terribly well written, but i think it gets the point across adequately. it's in this thread. https://twitter.com/wehpudicabok/status/1148519624150904832?s=19

rationalwiki's article on "groupthink" touches on this too, with a section talking about "epistemic closure". but i want to illustrate how much subtler this can be than simple groupthink.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Groupthink#Epistemic_closure

epistemic bubbles are not merely groups of people who all believe the same things. they are groups that view the world on the same terms - they consider the same questions relevant, the same opinions contentious or not, etc.

a good illustration of this can be found simply by asking a leftist why they aren't a liberal: they will likely say it's because the terms "liberal" and "conservative" presuppose a capitalist political orthodoxy that the leftist rejects. they're outside that bubble.

bear in mind of course that the leftist is outside *that* bubble, not outside *all* bubbles. leftists absolutely can, and often do, form their own bubbles. i've seen plenty of people dismiss out of hand US government propaganda but take communist propaganda at face value.

in their political community, the given is that the US government is lying, and communist governments are not. that's the basis for their worldview - essentially an inversion of the american conservative worldview.

i am by no means claiming the epistemic high ground for myself, by the way. i am quite certain there are realities of which i am ignorant because i instinctively dismiss them as nonsense.

but ultimately this thread isn't about me. it's about the epistemic fracture of our political discourse. i don't know that a society can function if its members can't even agree on what is real and what isn't.

in a different episode of last week tonight, oliver said "any policy discussion has to start with a shared sense of reality." he was talking about trump, but the problem long predates the current white house asshole. we haven't had a consensus in a long time.

i'm not writing this thread because i'm a supergenius with all the answers. i'm writing this because i believe this is a critical problem that needs addressing, and i freely admit i don't know entirely how to solve it. but i do have some ideas that might be worth considering.

the first and probably most important thing that i think everyone needs to do is think through about how best to answer that most important question, "How do you know?". you need an answer for that, one you can apply consistently whether a fact "feels true" or not.

because whether you want something to be true, and whether or not it is true, are two entirely unrelated things.

i can't give you a perfect, bulletproof method for determining the truth of any claim. that doesn't exist. but there are some general tips to bear in mind:

1) check other sources. has anyone independently said the same thing? can you verify that they said that?
2) evaluate for internal consistency. does the claim make sense on its own merits, or does it contradict itself?
3) is the source generally reliable? what is its history?

another important thing you can do is try to understand what motivates people to seek bubbles very different from your own. this can be difficult and i admit only limited success myself with this, but it can make communication easier.

i've often tried to understand what makes nationalists so emotionally invested in an abstraction that holds no real meaning for me, and i don't think i can. nevertheless, at least just saying "they value their nation" can provide some clarity in talking with them.

lastly, try to bear in mind that in an epistemic war, facts are often less the territory than the ammunition. almost any ideology can be reinforced by reporting some facts and ignoring others. therefore, debunking individual claims may not be terribly effective as persuasion.

let me give an example of what i mean there. i am often baffled by anti-immigrant sentiments among conservatives, and when they make claims about (for instance) crime rates, i have in the past tried to show that they aren't true. this has never helped me change anyone's mind.

when conservatives talk about immigrants committing crime, the (supposedly) high crime rate doesn't create anti-immigrant sentiment where none previously existed; it merely justifies what was already there. absent that justification, they'll find another.

this is because they value the integrity of their nation, and they see immigration as compromising that integrity. (why they value this, i still don't know, but they do.) they are approaching the question with an entirely separate (to me, alien) perspective.

times like this i like to remember that the word "worldview" breaks apart cleanly: it's how you view the world. it's not just what statements you affirm - it's also what questions you feel are worth answering. it's where you come from.

these are uncertain times, and i don't want to make any sweeping predictions for the future of our civilization's epistemology. but i do want you, the reader, to think critically about it, and to encourage others to do the same.

i'd like to leave you all with a quote that is very dear to my heart, from one of my personal heroes, ibn al-haytham. a scientist who lived a thousand years ago in what is now iraq, his writings on how to determine the truth laid the foundation for the modern scientific method.

think carefully about what world you inhabit, and what world you want to inhabit. they are not necessarily equal - but you can bring them together.

goodnight twitter. i love you all.