The Iraq example was good and added to the post. I could go either way on the agriculture example. “We could replace you with an unthinking, unquestioning patriot and get the same result” could possibly be “unthinking, unquestioning automaton”, but wouldn’t cause the same feeling for me in the pit of my stomach, the “I really don’t want to produce those results” feeling.
The Iraq example was awful because it is a very charged issue with people lying DEEPLY on both sides. There are a lot of people (myself included) who have been there, and who have either seen the same thing and gotten different impressions (and hence beliefs) about it, or people who have seen very different things and of course come away with different beliefs.
What Stieber did was an example of someone coming to a conclusion that their actions were wrong (not irrational as a large part of why he thought they were wrong was that people around him were acting contrary to his beliefs and their stated beliefs and acting from emotion rather than reason) (as an aside much of his conversion seems to his christian beliefs, which I respect more than most people here seem to) and changing what they were doing because of it at a very expensive cost, however it is a bad example because there are very logical reasons why what he did was wrong and those get in the way of understanding what the author’s point is.
It would be like me arguing that I realized my diet where I got most of my calories from starches and sugars was wrong, so I switched to a diet much heavier in meat and fresh vegetables, and that eating things like soy and wheat, because of things like gluten, phyto-estrogens, and phytic acid, are bad for you. Now, it is true that I recognized a problem, did some research, evaluated the evidence and made changes to my diet. This will be ignored in certain circles in favor of the position that EATING MEAT IS WRONG.
It is hard to get past the position (in my mind) that what Stieber did was wrong, and just deal with the point the author is making—that someone came to a decision and then made a change.
There is also the problem that the Author slightly mis-represents the facts presented in the article. The people in Baghdad didn’t say “Yankee’s go home”—they suggested that they did not want Americans in their part of Baghdad. That is a very different thing.
This is actually a very subtle form of propaganda, and of signaling. It’s very rude.
This must be weighed against the proportion of the audience in whom such a phrase would inspire exactly the opposite reaction (or, more likely, a stronger but opposite one). Though it’s not the phase itself but the associations the phrase triggers that’d do the damage; few people want to be unthinking adherents of anything but many have heard phrases like “unthinking and unquestioning” used to describe their political allies.
No idea what those proportions would be here, though.
The Iraq example was good and added to the post. I could go either way on the agriculture example. “We could replace you with an unthinking, unquestioning patriot and get the same result” could possibly be “unthinking, unquestioning automaton”, but wouldn’t cause the same feeling for me in the pit of my stomach, the “I really don’t want to produce those results” feeling.
The Iraq example was awful because it is a very charged issue with people lying DEEPLY on both sides. There are a lot of people (myself included) who have been there, and who have either seen the same thing and gotten different impressions (and hence beliefs) about it, or people who have seen very different things and of course come away with different beliefs.
What Stieber did was an example of someone coming to a conclusion that their actions were wrong (not irrational as a large part of why he thought they were wrong was that people around him were acting contrary to his beliefs and their stated beliefs and acting from emotion rather than reason) (as an aside much of his conversion seems to his christian beliefs, which I respect more than most people here seem to) and changing what they were doing because of it at a very expensive cost, however it is a bad example because there are very logical reasons why what he did was wrong and those get in the way of understanding what the author’s point is.
It would be like me arguing that I realized my diet where I got most of my calories from starches and sugars was wrong, so I switched to a diet much heavier in meat and fresh vegetables, and that eating things like soy and wheat, because of things like gluten, phyto-estrogens, and phytic acid, are bad for you. Now, it is true that I recognized a problem, did some research, evaluated the evidence and made changes to my diet. This will be ignored in certain circles in favor of the position that EATING MEAT IS WRONG.
It is hard to get past the position (in my mind) that what Stieber did was wrong, and just deal with the point the author is making—that someone came to a decision and then made a change.
There is also the problem that the Author slightly mis-represents the facts presented in the article. The people in Baghdad didn’t say “Yankee’s go home”—they suggested that they did not want Americans in their part of Baghdad. That is a very different thing.
This is actually a very subtle form of propaganda, and of signaling. It’s very rude.
(edited to fix a grammatical error)
This must be weighed against the proportion of the audience in whom such a phrase would inspire exactly the opposite reaction (or, more likely, a stronger but opposite one). Though it’s not the phase itself but the associations the phrase triggers that’d do the damage; few people want to be unthinking adherents of anything but many have heard phrases like “unthinking and unquestioning” used to describe their political allies.
No idea what those proportions would be here, though.