MORMON QUESTION:
"Why does it feel like whenever I interact with people on the political left they always seem angry? I don't get it. It seems like I can have reasonable conversations with Anarchists, Independents, and Conservatives about a whole host of cultural and political topics. Occasionally I also have some very fruitful dialogue with Liberals. But when those on the far left enter into dialogue with me their anger and rhetoric becomes explosive and confrontational almost immediately. When it comes to political matters they seem to really believe that neutrality on any topic is their viewpoint and that we can't "agree to disagree" on anything without me being the personification of evil. Is there a neurological phenomenon behind this? Because I hate to keep losing friends with people over minor disagreements. How can I love my neighbors that I disagree with when they seem to think I am a bad actor right from the get go? Or in other words, while practicing rule 9 how do I convince other people to practice it as well?"
TRANSCENDENT PHILOSOPHY:
I noticed in The Coddling of the American Mind, it seemed even Jonathan Haidt was failing to fully understand the psychology of the far left. He often strawmans them with the argument "they just don't like being offended" - which is WAY too shallow of reasoning. He then gets half of the problem right when he talks about catastrophizing - the cognitive bias of always jumping to the worst possible conclusion. But it is even deeper than that. I once watched a viral video of one of the dyed hair leftists rant in such a way that I instantly understood the root of the psychology behind it. Basically, it was as if the neurons in her brain had a chain of logic programmed very tightly. When she became aware of some anti-LGBT messaging, she jumped to the conclusion of stochastic terrorism. Stochastic terrorism is the idea that hateful messaging has a causal influence on a populous, such that random harm will occur thereby. When their brains see hateful messaging, then instantly connect that to a web of people who are being infected by such messaging. Then they connect that to the probability that some of those people will bully LGBT people as a stochastic consequence. And then some LGBT people will commit suicide as a stochastic consequence. And because society is so virally connected, the probability of LGBT death due to your hateful speech is basically guaranteed. Hence, your very words make you instantly guilty of murder. These people are not just offended. They are not just thinking negatively. They have come to the conclusion that you ARE evil - because you should know that your speech causes death, and the fact that you do it anyway makes those deaths intentional. You are now a stochastic murderer in their eyes. The only way to resolve it is to confront them when they are not triggered into righteous indignation by this chain of logic. Discuss the cognitive jumps in their logic. Diffuse their anger by helping them see that their logical jumps aren't justified. That is the only chance you have of not being evil in their eyes.
Further Thoughts
Logical jumping:
Logical jumping is the name I am giving to a perceived cognitive distortion in which one's brain wiring seems overly tightly connected in such a way that one's initial conclusion automatically electrifies the next conclusion, upon which a further conclusion gets electrified, etc., forming a chain of activated conclusions that are supposably deducible from the initial conclusion.
The problem is that the brain is operating too quickly to apply proper skepticism to each link in the logical chain. Furthermore, the more links in the chain, the higher the probability of error. An error in the chain can warp all the conclusions that are based upon it. And the higher up in the chain the error is, the more drastically all following conclusions will be warped away from reality.
This hyper energized set of brain connections can provide the subjective feeling of certainty, as we often confuse that which comes to our brains easily as reliable truth. But we can create artificial pseudo-certainty by repeating bad logic to ourselves over and over, further solidifying those brain connections - this is how religions work. So, if your political sources are also repeating bad logic to you, you might also become a victim of this logical jumping cognitive distortion.
There is a hypothesis that this logical jumping cognitive distortion affects the political left more severely than it does the right. My subjective experience is that as I have migrated to the left politically, I have personally fallen prey to this distortion more than I did in the past. I have some thoughts as to why this might be the case.
One of the personality differences between the right and the left is trait "openness". The left is much more open, in terms of being accepting of new ideas, new foods, new experiences, very open to interacting with different religions, cultures, races, and nationalities.
One of the applications of the concept of openness (or closedness) is related to borders. If you are open, then you want the border to be open so that new stuff can flow in. This would increase creativity, which is a trait highly linked to openness. But if you are closed, you will want the border closed. Why is that?
It seems to be based on risk apprehension and risk tolerance. If you see high risk and have low tolerance, you will want to close the border to protect yourself. If you see low risk and have high tolerance, you will want to open the border to benefit yourself.
Back to logical jumping, in the brain there are links of neurons connecting to each other. There are borders between each neuron. Each neuron has an activation threshold.
One way to think about openness neurologically is that an open border between brain cells means that it is easy for ions to flow from one cell to the next, making it easy to activate the next cell.
Conversely, neurologically, closedness would be a state in which neurons are insulated such that it takes much greater electrical signal to successfully get through the border and activate the next cell.
So, the neurological hypothesis is that personality openness is correlated to neurological openness. Given that politically left-leaning people are more open, they might suffer at a greater propensity from cognitive distortions that arise from neurological openness - which might include logical jumping.
Of course, this is all just conjecture. What do you think?
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