ibly support jerks.
Beyond that, the agreement breaks down. Who are the suckers and jerks? On this we disagree.
If you think you know some suckers or jerks, consider sending them this article; for example, your Facebook friends supporting a presidential candidate you think is a jerk. On FB, you can find them by searching “likes Clinton,” “likes Trump,” or “likes Bernie.”
Beyond FB searches, by what method can you tell who is sucker or a jerk? On this we also agree: A jerk is someone who spouts things we know are stupid, and suckers are the people who believe those jerks.
Does that search strategy work? Apparently not. Ours is a world torn by factions accusing each other of being suckers and jerks. The factions aren’t probably all wrong, and yet they can’t all be right.
So maybe a stronger test: The suckers and the jerks they follow are the people you really, really, REALLY disagree with.
This test fails too. Idiot fanatics employ it and they’re sure you’re a sucker by just that hyper-passionate standard.
Here’s a better test that’s getting some traction lately:
Suckers are people who fall for fake profoundness. They find meaningless statements deep if they’re worded to sound deep. Suckers hear attitude, not substance.
Suckers are packaging junkies. They devour whatever is packaged prettily, even if the package is empty, or filled with toxic waste or with junk that will fall apart the first time they try to use it. For suckers, the packaging is everything.
The package is rhetorical sugar coating or really any flavoring that appeals to our hungers. If you’re hungry for power, you’ll fall for power packaging. If you’re hungry for certainty, you’ll fall for the sound of certainty. If you’re hungry for spiritual depth, you’ll fall for the sound of spiritual depth, even if its packaging for gibberish.
This is why that stronger test is also the worst. Believing something passionately often says more about our hunger to believe than about the truth-value of what we believe.
Hunger is one explanation for suckerdom. Another is a limited education. You probably remember from childhood listening to adults you didn’t understand. You didn’t immediately think “this person is spouting jive.” You probably thought, “this is over my head” and gave it the benefit of the doubt.
Up to a point, it’s good to give things the benefit of the doubt like that. It’s better than saying “this must be nonsense” about anything you don’t understand. Even as adults, a lot of sound reasoning is going to be over our heads, and we don’t want to dismiss it as nonsense just because we don’t get it.
We are all born naïve suckers. That’s why jerk parents can get away with nonsense for years. A hungry child is a sucker and we are all born hungry.
Detecting fake profundity is a learned skill. It takes lots of practice. It’s not easy to learn even if we want to, and we only half want to, because that packaging is often just so delicious.
The ability to detect fake profundity involves critical thinking, but not just. It's critical thinking when the subject matter is slathered in whatever rhetorical flavoring appeals most to our hungers.
There’s a lot of talk about how US education is falling behind. A failing education system is bad for the future of American enterprise and culture. With limited budgets, though, we must prioritize, and about the highest priority is sucker-proofing our citizens.
As with snack foods, our rhetorical flavorings get lustier and lustier through innovation, every effective rhetorical recipe remembered forever and served up fresh to naive taste buds. And there are always new naïve taste buds. A sucker is born every minute.
Fortunately, it’s never too late to sucker-proof ourselves, and the tools for doing it are pretty straightforward. Here are four simple tools. Apply them to anything touted as deep, especially the stuff that makes your gut respond with an immediate and enthusiastic, “right on!”
Can it be stated in plain language? If it can't, it’s probably the packaging you're tasting, the deep sounding words that are a dog whistle to hungry suckers. For some great basic practice, check out computer-generated fake-depth from sites like these: New age, Business, Politics.
Can you find an exception? Most supposedly deep stuff has sweeping implications, as though it’s a truth forever more and for every situation. To see if it’s that true, don’t just look at instances where it applies, look, and look hard, for instances where it doesn’t apply, even exaggerated hypotheticals. If you can find even one exception, then it’s not as sweepingly deep as it’s touted to be. “Always be kind”? Imagine Nazi’s saying that to the allied powers trying to rain on their storm trooper parade.
Could your opposition use that packaging against you? Paradoxically, to get at the substance of a message, set the substance aside for a moment. Strip the message of whatever about it appeals to your gut, and then imagine your worst enemy saying it to you. If it no longer rings true, then it’s your gut that embraces it self-servingly and it’s not as true as you think. For example, “Perseverance furthers” sounds great when you only think about applying it to your virtuous campaigns. How about if ISIS uses it as its motto?
Is it presented as fact but full of loaded terms? Some terms are neutral. Others are loaded, slathered with positive and negative connotations. “To exit” is neutral. “To abandon” is often pejorative. “To persist” is neutral. “To be steadfast” is positive and “to be stubborn” is negative. To further whatever we support, we like to use loaded terms as though they’re neutral. “You’re not exiting our relationship, you’re abandoning me,” “I’m not being stubborn; I’m being steadfast.” It’s fine to use loaded terms to express opinion. But non-suckers note when a message is packaged in loaded terms and presented as though it’s plain fact. A red flag goes up. They know to counter the loading so they can hear neutrally. For more on this technique check this article. And here for computer-generated Trump insults stated as fact.
Suckers often become jerks. They don’t just follow the jerk leaders, they identify with them. For example, those who are hungry for power and therefore buy some powerful-sounding nonsense are likely to assume that, having bought the message, they have gained the power to sell it.
If you don’t want to be a sucker or a jerk in support of any message, no matter how virtuous-sounding, apply these four tests. You’ll jerk and be jerked around far less than you would be if you just follow your gut hungers wherever they lead. We can’t know all our hungers. When it comes to rhetoric, we’re all like alcoholics who deny it, claiming that we stay sober when we don’t. The biggest suckers and jerks are confident that they’re not. They think they see reality itself. That too is a tell: Anyone who proudly says, “I’m a realist,” is a sucker or a jerk. It’s the sound of a hunger for self-certainty, a blanket blessing of the gut’s drunken truths.
Here is another report on a psychological studies that use the computer-generated nonsense to detect gullibility.
Beyond that, the agreement breaks down. Who are the suckers and jerks? On this we disagree.
If you think you know some suckers or jerks, consider sending them this article; for example, your Facebook friends supporting a presidential candidate you think is a jerk. On FB, you can find them by searching “likes Clinton,” “likes Trump,” or “likes Bernie.”
Beyond FB searches, by what method can you tell who is sucker or a jerk? On this we also agree: A jerk is someone who spouts things we know are stupid, and suckers are the people who believe those jerks.
Does that search strategy work? Apparently not. Ours is a world torn by factions accusing each other of being suckers and jerks. The factions aren’t probably all wrong, and yet they can’t all be right.
So maybe a stronger test: The suckers and the jerks they follow are the people you really, really, REALLY disagree with.
This test fails too. Idiot fanatics employ it and they’re sure you’re a sucker by just that hyper-passionate standard.
Here’s a better test that’s getting some traction lately:
Suckers are people who fall for fake profoundness. They find meaningless statements deep if they’re worded to sound deep. Suckers hear attitude, not substance.
Suckers are packaging junkies. They devour whatever is packaged prettily, even if the package is empty, or filled with toxic waste or with junk that will fall apart the first time they try to use it. For suckers, the packaging is everything.
The package is rhetorical sugar coating or really any flavoring that appeals to our hungers. If you’re hungry for power, you’ll fall for power packaging. If you’re hungry for certainty, you’ll fall for the sound of certainty. If you’re hungry for spiritual depth, you’ll fall for the sound of spiritual depth, even if its packaging for gibberish.
This is why that stronger test is also the worst. Believing something passionately often says more about our hunger to believe than about the truth-value of what we believe.
Hunger is one explanation for suckerdom. Another is a limited education. You probably remember from childhood listening to adults you didn’t understand. You didn’t immediately think “this person is spouting jive.” You probably thought, “this is over my head” and gave it the benefit of the doubt.
Up to a point, it’s good to give things the benefit of the doubt like that. It’s better than saying “this must be nonsense” about anything you don’t understand. Even as adults, a lot of sound reasoning is going to be over our heads, and we don’t want to dismiss it as nonsense just because we don’t get it.
We are all born naïve suckers. That’s why jerk parents can get away with nonsense for years. A hungry child is a sucker and we are all born hungry.
Detecting fake profundity is a learned skill. It takes lots of practice. It’s not easy to learn even if we want to, and we only half want to, because that packaging is often just so delicious.
The ability to detect fake profundity involves critical thinking, but not just. It's critical thinking when the subject matter is slathered in whatever rhetorical flavoring appeals most to our hungers.
There’s a lot of talk about how US education is falling behind. A failing education system is bad for the future of American enterprise and culture. With limited budgets, though, we must prioritize, and about the highest priority is sucker-proofing our citizens.
As with snack foods, our rhetorical flavorings get lustier and lustier through innovation, every effective rhetorical recipe remembered forever and served up fresh to naive taste buds. And there are always new naïve taste buds. A sucker is born every minute.
Fortunately, it’s never too late to sucker-proof ourselves, and the tools for doing it are pretty straightforward. Here are four simple tools. Apply them to anything touted as deep, especially the stuff that makes your gut respond with an immediate and enthusiastic, “right on!”
Can it be stated in plain language? If it can't, it’s probably the packaging you're tasting, the deep sounding words that are a dog whistle to hungry suckers. For some great basic practice, check out computer-generated fake-depth from sites like these: New age, Business, Politics.
Can you find an exception? Most supposedly deep stuff has sweeping implications, as though it’s a truth forever more and for every situation. To see if it’s that true, don’t just look at instances where it applies, look, and look hard, for instances where it doesn’t apply, even exaggerated hypotheticals. If you can find even one exception, then it’s not as sweepingly deep as it’s touted to be. “Always be kind”? Imagine Nazi’s saying that to the allied powers trying to rain on their storm trooper parade.
Could your opposition use that packaging against you? Paradoxically, to get at the substance of a message, set the substance aside for a moment. Strip the message of whatever about it appeals to your gut, and then imagine your worst enemy saying it to you. If it no longer rings true, then it’s your gut that embraces it self-servingly and it’s not as true as you think. For example, “Perseverance furthers” sounds great when you only think about applying it to your virtuous campaigns. How about if ISIS uses it as its motto?
Is it presented as fact but full of loaded terms? Some terms are neutral. Others are loaded, slathered with positive and negative connotations. “To exit” is neutral. “To abandon” is often pejorative. “To persist” is neutral. “To be steadfast” is positive and “to be stubborn” is negative. To further whatever we support, we like to use loaded terms as though they’re neutral. “You’re not exiting our relationship, you’re abandoning me,” “I’m not being stubborn; I’m being steadfast.” It’s fine to use loaded terms to express opinion. But non-suckers note when a message is packaged in loaded terms and presented as though it’s plain fact. A red flag goes up. They know to counter the loading so they can hear neutrally. For more on this technique check this article. And here for computer-generated Trump insults stated as fact.
Suckers often become jerks. They don’t just follow the jerk leaders, they identify with them. For example, those who are hungry for power and therefore buy some powerful-sounding nonsense are likely to assume that, having bought the message, they have gained the power to sell it.
If you don’t want to be a sucker or a jerk in support of any message, no matter how virtuous-sounding, apply these four tests. You’ll jerk and be jerked around far less than you would be if you just follow your gut hungers wherever they lead. We can’t know all our hungers. When it comes to rhetoric, we’re all like alcoholics who deny it, claiming that we stay sober when we don’t. The biggest suckers and jerks are confident that they’re not. They think they see reality itself. That too is a tell: Anyone who proudly says, “I’m a realist,” is a sucker or a jerk. It’s the sound of a hunger for self-certainty, a blanket blessing of the gut’s drunken truths.
Here is another report on a psychological studies that use the computer-generated nonsense to detect gullibility.
Ambigamy
Insights for the deeply romantic and deeply skeptical
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