[FRIAM] interactive media bias chart

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Yeah, but the point I've made at least more than once is that *some* of us (not me) have the cognitive power to be fluid with our interest in dimension reduction. But most of us do not. I was jerked back into thinking about the asymmetry of radicalization this morning by stumbling across this post:

Science Says Sam Harris is Alt-Right
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/science-says-sam-harris-is-alt-right

Although I completely disagree with (the NYT article) clumping Scott Alexander in with the so-called lefties of the IDW (e.g. Weinstein or Harris), Scott's argument that rationalism can be *both* an on-ramp *and* an off-ramp to radicalization is fundamentally flawed. What Scott misses, I think, is that it's much harder to get off of some ideal than it is to get onto some ideal ... like a deep basin of attraction. Scott (and many of the people on this list) DOES have the cognitive power to slide in and out of alternative reductions. But Dunning-Kruger warns you super smart people against over-estimating the competence of your lessers (like me).

And this targets, nicely, BC Smith's concept of preemptive registration. Once you've *grokked* a reductive model, it is exceedingly difficult to un-grok it so you can grok an incommensurate alternative. 

Plus, the old adages about judging people by their [friends|enemies] works just as well in these contexts. Or Nietzsche's staring into the abyss. That [Joe Rogan|Jim Rutt|...] is so friendly with such horrible people, puts him at risk for being a horrible person. And here is where I side with (what I think) Nick and EricC might say. If you act like a duck, you *are* a duck. Wear that Chip-of-I've-Been-Cancelled on your shoulder long enough and you will become that Chip-Wearing-Person.

It's a difficult game to play. So I choose agnosticism and skepticism as the rule, not the exception. Reduction is powerful. And like all powerful technologies, it's as dangerous as it is powerful.

On 2/26/21 8:27 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Great find!   I admit to being taken by this chart when I first found it, simply (or most notably?) because I was so hungry for it.
> 
> I appreciate the analysis in the linked article, but I attribute a lot of the use(full-less)ness of the chart to it's significant dimension reduction, and the specific choice of basis space.  
> 
> It seems *we* visited another acute reduction a few months back with what I took to be a strong self-image bias at the time:
> 
> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-homunculus-edition.html


-- 
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ