Is there a name/phrase for this behavior?

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Excellent writeup again techstep. Btw, for clarity I was addressing the first post question as in what is this situation called. Hope all is good with you bro.

You would have to give us an example.

Or maybe I can concoct a ...relatively non polarizing...hypothetical example.

The trouble is that if the topic is worth arguing about then it usually IS polarizing because folks are emotionally invested in it.

But I will try.

OK.

If the topic were "should the US ditch the Imperial system and adopt Metric?".

Lets say I take one, or the other, side. Lets say I say "lets adopt Metric". But I give no reason why. And when you and other folks give arguments for keeping Imperial I just don't respond by addressing the content of your arguments. I just either ignore you, or I make fun of your bad spelling. Or like that.

So the question is "what would you call my behavior then?".

I dunno. "Obfuscation"?

Bubble vision
Bubblicious
Bubble jointed
Bubble Headed

I think there might have to be the added caveat that there's history that we don't know, ie. have they given at-length articles, theses, etc. as to why metric would be better in the US, everyone ignored them, pelted them with 'metric is for sinners' or 'it's un-'mercan', they might give up, get cynical, and in the odd case where someone is able to come to the topic, thinking clearly rather than emotionally, from the side that imperial is better for x, y, or z settings and so we should have both, or some type of complex argument with real-world rammifications, the other person might still be on autopilot and simply respond the same way to them as they did the tribal warriors.

The thing I wonder about though, how much should we, politely, hold people to account to separating current circumstances from past circumstances and seeing things accurately rather than through strictly historical lenses. Ideas can progress and evolve, people's reasoning can as well, and for anyone who spends enough time watching long-form interviews and debates on Youtube it seems like they can get a lot in from very sharp thinkers. The question is whether they're using it right, whether they're bringing it in good faith, and I think that's something that anyone - embattled or not - has to do their best to pick through, or alternately get away from the keyboard, get some rest, and come back at it when they have the reserves to do that.

Try looking at it from his pov.

The person might actually be an authority on the subject. If so then he may feel that he has to regurgitate the entire contents of the Encylopedia Brittanica to answer every point made by everyone else. So he just balks at it. Like if you wondered into a psych ward where everyone was convinced that Corvid 19 was designed by North Korea to take over the world. How would you be able to disprove that to those folks?

I do understand that there's tinfoil hattery involved, I was thinking of that with my 'metric's un-'mercan' or 'it's a nwo conspiracy' - pretty much the same people complaining about their tribal heraldry getting damaged. If I took a look at some of my own metaphysical views and had someone confront me with Sunday school bible platitudes I'd probably be in a position where I'd have to politely deflect in the same way where my friend's brother-in-law whose a devout Muslim started confiding in us that there are people who believe that people came from monkeys and that religion will probably be gone in a few hundred years and it's crazy - I sort of tried to test the waters on that one, admitted that I'm one of those people, and that's about as far as I could get because it was like trying to get two gears in traction where the teeth were set at completely different intervals and no common language could be established.

In the day and age of the internet I think the one thing that the subject matter expert you're talking about might want to do, knowing what the hot topics are, is be able to frame the shape of the container, for their views, in maybe half a page of bullet points that can be expanded if needed but really have people Google points 1, 2, 3, etc. to understand that those discoveries, that we can be certain of the veracity of, exclude something like... say... certain types of power/energy creation or certain types of universe/cosmology that aren't just counterintuitive to our astronomy and physics but genuinely excluded.

Playing around these topics there's a bit of fluid merge-and-mingle, in the OP I was thinking about someone reaching out into adjacent fields where their expertise doesn't necessarily travel and rating/berating it, ie. missing the John Stuart Mill injunction not to settle one's beliefs without knowing the other side of the argument. At the same time though if their mind is spread into their field of expertise so deeply that they can't pull back the salient points and give a low-fidelity but accurate map of what things are - it raises the question of whether they really have a cohesive understanding of what they're studying or whether they're sitting on top of a raft of facts that they haven't been able to connect well.

It's special to see how there are different approaches
Domineekee seems more like putting it in visual images, visual thinking, in terms as "blinded by....", "Bubble vision"; which would be my approach, quick and simple
The "Americans" (?) on this forum seem more like putting it in words. The post of Techstepgeneration are to the point and strong, but relatively long;

For naturalplastic: I am awfully sorry if I miss some points, I really am not the communicative/clever type of person; perhaps I am too autistic to be on a forum
Once I read in German that on a forum you can be "einsam und gemeinsam", which translates as "alone and together", but that's still difficult

Things are much better at work than they were a month ago, and I have to consider myself incredibly fortunate that with the Covid thing I can both work from home and get ten hours of my life back (would have been driving an hour both ways each day). Hopefully life's treating you well also!

This is where I think it would be slick sometimes if we were able to catch those moments where we realize that one person is running on a gear that's got 3mm teeth and the other is 2mm.

There's a Youtube channel called Rebel Wisdom where they've got sort of a blend of Eric and Bret Weinstein thinking along with secular Buddhism, futurists, political analysists, psychedelic researchers, and some of what they're big on (particularly with Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jamie Wheal, and Jordan Hall/Greenhall) is social structure, sense making, ways to enhance dialog, etc.. I think there are some interesting ideas there but the additional trick seems to be getting the job done with as little new/invented words such as you have in various systems of philosophy. That's where I think techniques, self check-ins, etc.. It's like there has to be a way of fielding communication well, avoiding fights over missed syntax, and keeping at a level where it's not some sort of MENSA game that no one else can really play - otherwise without wide applicability it's not really useful.

Thanks for your reaction, that seems quite to the point

one person is running on a gear that's got 3mm teeth and the other is 2mm

That's the feeling I sometimes have on a forum, as on the German highway:
Das Auto fliegt aus der Kurve.
The car flies out of the curve
(my car unfortunately)

The other thing I should add - if anyone reading my OP or further along thinks 'Wait... I resemble that remark' and you're someone I often disagree with vehemently, the point isn't to chastise the disagreement, lets still disagree vehemently if it's called for but just enjoy higher quality in how we disagree vehemently .

Well...it just boils down to this: you think that that guy is being narrowminded. And he thinks that you're being narrowminded. And maybe one, the other, or both, of you right.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 02 Apr 2020, 6:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think you’re describing a subset of confirmation bias. Some people have used sight metaphors. A common on for confirmation bias is “having your blinkers on”. So maybe try something like “blinkering”?

True that this is been around for a while as vernacular but I often think if something's sort of a hidden issue that needs more focus it needs something properly catchy, and like a good joke it needs to have a powerful dose of truth and observation in there to make it stick - not to label the people but just to make it something readily recognizable and embarrassing if one is either caught doing it or catches themselves doing it. A good example of something pretty powerful was the NPC (non-player character) meme that went around that described people who had surrendered their thinking to tribe boiler-plate and platitudes, and that choice of metaphor and its the sort of thing that caught on with people fast, especially people who hadn't made that connection and agreed it was dead-aim. Stuff like that tends to launch a logical object of sorts into culture that's difficult to evade once it's been spun up and accordingly it modifies behavior.

What I'm really thinking is there's a way to tell whether one, the other, or both parties are being narrow-minded in a conversation and it's whether they're acknowledging and digesting each other's points whether that's going only one way, or whether neither are doing it. With that I don't think it needs to be a 'he said she said lets stay out of it'. Obviously it's better for other people to speak on one's behalf on that sort of thing, otherwise you're trying to tell people how good your conduct is in a conversation and how dreadful the other person's being (surrree......) but still - I think there are tangible enough ways for people not in the conversation to sort that one out.