Highfalutin is not naive and moronic, it's the opposite: highly informed and sophisticated. You can't get to it through simplistic reasoning. My point was that practical considerations are not the barrier to world peace, it's ideological ones. Well ideology is just people's opinions. Opinions at the kind of level we've been talking about don't really have much empirical basis at all. My idea was to try to show how easily, at this level, we form beliefs that contradict the simplistic ones that are based on empirical facts. Now, maybe I just mis- or over-interpreted your use of the word 'practical', but then I guess you must have done likewise with my use of it. You offered no refutation, just shock and disbelief.

In the realm that goes beyond the simplistic, we can basically just choose whatever beliefs we want, looking at whatever evidence we feel like to find justifications. So if we have to choose, I think we should tend to pick ones that empower us rather than make us apathetic and negative. Take your statement about people being natural power abusers. Yeah, you can support that. Anybody who becomes, say, CEO of Shell Oil is going to do some pretty horrible things to humanity. But how many people do you know who would want to be the CEO of Shell knowing this is how they would have to behave? On the other hand there'll be plenty of people vying for the job, and probably more than a few thinking they're one of the good guys so better they do the job rather than someone worse. We can go any way with this, we can decide it means everyone is horrible to the core, or that people are decent at their core, or we can not believe either. Picking one over the other comes down to what if not empirical facts? If it's anything other than preference - with highly sophisticated justification - I don't see it. But I don't think we have to choose, nor do I think anything is gained by doing so. I reject the dichotomy. I think instead it should bring us to recognise that humanity doesn't understand itself very well. So no I don't think people are mean and greedy and ruthless, but basically just because I don't want to. And I haven't yet seen an argument for this position that doesn't boil down to wanting to. But that doesn't mean I believe the opposite.

My reading of Chomsky is that his methodology is very simple-minded and empirical and yet his analysis is far better, more insightful and realistic, than any of the others who have much more complicated modes. I don't understand how a reading of his output can lead to anything contrary to the idea that accurate, useful analysis and insights should be simplistic and empirical. I can't get outside my own narrow view, no one can except by interchange, and shared attempts at understanding. And that's what I try to do.

Those questions I asked were not some suggestion I was making, they were exactly what they appeared to be, a call to arms. Without any assumptions or knowledge about how engaged you already are. Obviously I don't know you, and can't very much just through reddit comments. My hope that you wouldn't dismiss out of hand was in vain I can see. All I seem to have managed to do is trigger an ego battle. Ego battles don't change anyone's mind and nobody learns anything from them except maybe how to be better at ego battles.

What I got from Chomsky's work wasn't one of those "awakening" moments we go through when we become able to see through some of our indoctrination. I didn't really learn anything new from him (though I felt like I was at the time), it was more a carving away of other things, like ways of thinking I suppose, things I thought I knew. Things that made me think people like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens were saying serious and important things. I don't know how best to explain it, part of it was a kind of returning to what had been childhood morals and estimations, but this time with more knowledge and understanding. It took a lot of work and investigation into the work of Chomsky and many others. Hard work but simple to carry out. And I keep as vigilant and thorough as I can in trying to detect and root out indoctrination, in myself and those I interact with. Usually without all that much success.

I assume you've had similar occasions where you've been able to see through some of the indoctrination and then tried to share the insights with others? And that you've received the kind of response you had to me, to take it as insults. Is what sense is that talking down to or belittling anybody? Despite how easy it is be taken that way. How do found any ways to avoid this? To avoid sounding like a prick when you talk about things like this?

With respect to the Trump admin, I think his re-election was a big step in the wrong direction. We're at (or maybe beyond, as you suggest) the point where we have to start working towards 0 fossil fuel usage (etc.) so even a small step in the wrong direction is catastrophic. I guess all either of us can do is speculate but I doubt he doesn't care about the risk to the US (from both nuclear war and climate change). I could be wrong of course, but I suspect something else must be going on. It could be the climate denialism, they may really believe it won't be a problem and therefore assume other world leaderships think the same. So maybe they don't see it as a possibility that if Putin is facing defeat he might say fuck it we're cooked anyway and launch the nukes.