Left to my own devices

You may not have heard, but there was a US presidential debate earlier this week. Kamala Harris (current vice-president) vs. Donald Trump (former president). I couldn't stomach to watch it, but of course I read news articles about it afterward, talked with a couple of people in-person the next morning who'd seen it, and of course there was the barrage of social media friends who were commenting on it. It's that last part I wanted to talk about. First, I'm obviously not against someone's debate performance being analyzed. Heck, there are classes in public schools that are all about debate. So, that isn't the issue. What bothers me is how the performances are analyzed. Like, yeah, sure, have a poll asking folks what they thought of the debate, and who they thought did better. That's fine. It's the reactions I've been seeing primarily on social media that are concerning. It's like I'm back in school. Except, these are adults (at least in chron...

Early last week, Kevin Drum wrote a blog post about debate. Specifically, Drum proffered the the view that most people aren't swayed by truths, or a logical laying-out of facts, but instead by feelings and sentiment. This resonated with me as 1) I agree with it, and 2) most folks agree with it, as well, but would deny that they do. Let's first look at a salient quote from Drum's piece: "Sadly, people are not persuaded by facts. They are persuaded by emotions. They are persuaded only when they're listening to someone who shares their worldview. They are persuaded by "arguments" that are beneficial to them - perhaps monetarily, perhaps in conferring status, perhaps in vilifying people they already didn't like. This is how you win in real life." I'm not sure it's always been this way. It feels like (there I go with feelings) people are more hardened in their beliefs now than they used to be, though that could just be a trick of memory. R...