This one especially applies to politics. If you are one of those looking for "sanity", or "common sense", and can't imagine how the other side can possibly hold some position, then this applies to you.
If you’re debating the optimal sales tax rate, yes, being unable to comprehend the other side means you’re doing it wrong. If the topic is, say, wiping out people of a particular religion, not so much.
As a nihilist I would disagree.
The kind of people that want to do that have a much different set of morality and ethics.
There is no objective moral framework that you can base claims for or against wiping out a particular religion. You can however use your own, personal, subjective moral framework and most people will probably have something vaguely compatible to it and agree with you that wiping out religions and it's people is bad.
The actual requirement for persuasion is a believable narrative with a bit of moral weight, and a random selection of standard persuasive tricks that politicians and lawyers have been deploying with outrageous success for millennia.
Generally, being objectively correct is one of the least effective ways to change anyone's mind. You might have some hope in a scientific setting. But in popular debate, facts and rationality are almost completely powerless.
I do know that not challenging them respectfully is unlikely to persuade anyone least of all yourself.
If you believe that banning sex education in schools will decrease teen pregnancy, and it turns out that teen pregnancy rates actually increase when teens aren't educated, then your belief about sex education isn't rational.
Many - possibly most - public policy decisions are open to this kind of testing.
The fact that formal testing rarely happens, and that it's consistently ignored even when it does, suggests that politics itself is inherently pre-rational.
Arguably it's then irrational to expect it to be rational - but that's a deeper problem that doesn't just apply to politics.
Before people knew the earth was a globe, it was entirely rational to think everything that goes up goes down again.
And for all testing you can do, ie, throwing an apple up, it'll come down again.
It is entirely rational to conclude from the available evidence that everything falls down when thrown.
But recently we've discovered that things you throw up hard enough may not fall down at all.
Thusly, the rational thought was still rational but wrong.
Predictability is important when you want to evaluate scientific models (ie, assume earth is flat, assume earth is round, assume earth is a mostly round potato all have different predictive quality, though the first ones are easier and sometimes sufficient)
I, like many, was appalled to hear the statistics on the number of people who believe news they didn't agree with was "fake news" regardless of its accuracy.
Then I heard a counter-argument: in short they're applying the rubric "fake news" to biased news, which is a whole 'nother discussion I'd rather not dive into here.
I don't think there are all that many truly irrational beliefs out there, political or otherwise. The world is a massively complex place, and I can't really blame people for letting con men tell them otherwise.
(Ok, who am I kidding: yes I can blame them, but it does no good to assume everyone who disagrees with me is stupid or a victim.)
Certainty in actions, when well prepared, has a magical and transformative effect on things.
I am willing to entertain thought experiments about how I can be wrong but I know I am not about certain ideas and philosophies.
Can you give some examples?
any philosophy/belief system that is descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive/normative) will be _apodictically_certain_ to the extent that it is free from internal contradictions. in simple cases we can examine the ideas and be very confident that there are no internal contradictions.
for example: given "A implies B" and "A" then we can conclude "B".
essentially any time you formalize definitions to the point that a statement of equivalence becomes obvious as a tautology, then you have an idea you can be certain about.
rejection of the principle of identity leaves one at the point where no further intersubjective dialogue is meaningful. which is why Avicenna said that anyone who denies the identity should be beaten until he acknowledges that "to be beaten" is not the same as "to not be beaten" and he should be burned until he acknowledges that "being burned" is not the same as "not being burned." [1]
I'm very interested in any corrections, comments, or other replies. I'm also aware that there are other approaches to logic besides the aristotelian approach I have tried to convey above. an example of a non-aristotelian attempt at communicating would be e-prime [2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction#Avicen...
Oh, absolutely. I was merely suggesting that there is a difference between a lack of doubt for all practical purposes, and a lack of doubt in principle. This difference may not be terribly helpful or pertinent, of course.
Easier to move forward with that default assumption and try to prove I'm not as wrong as I thought and that "right" is the wrong attitude to hold.
However, some things are tautological. Some things may be necessary in reality, even if they are not in any model. (I wake up each morning because I have no alternative, not because it is the 'right thing to do'.) Some things are very safe to assume because our human cultural context or our biological environment is stable over multiple generations of activity. And some things are true simply because assuming otherwise contradicts the assumptions needed for language to work effectively. And sometimes we do prove things, even if we lack any meaningful ability to prove what we'd like to the degree that we'd like.
The point is, we're not always wrong in a linguistic sense. Any time you have a statement that is perfectly symmetrical and valid in every context, you do not have language which can be used to make decisions. It's only meaningful to be wrong if there are things you can be right about.
(In ML terms, how do you apply gradient descent if every path forward is up?)
Am I supposed to question myself here? Supposed to assume I'm wrong? Your line of thinking is very dangerous and not safe, it enables very bad people by making good people assume they are terrible people themselves.
White nationalists present some interesting problems, problems that are real and valid. Their lens is wrong (this problem exists, therefore I will interpret the problem in a way that I am superior and others are inferior).
Your doubt should come from that understanding.
I said, "If you can't fathom the other side and where they're coming from..." meaning, you should "seek first to understand", also known as Habit #5 from Franklin Covey.
> Your line of thinking is very dangerous and not safe, it enables very bad people by making good people assume they are terrible people themselves.
It is always healthy to examine why one is convicted about certain beliefs. Is it rooted in fact, or fear of the unknown? Since you brought up White Nationalism, this is one of my favorite success stories from a man that sought to understand the very people that hated him: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...
Daryl Davis has done great things just by listening.
Consider the fact that you are a byproduct of the endless programming and propaganda behind the War on Terror. If you have no doubts on that subject, YOU are wrong.
You can critique the way we acquire information and use that to cast doubt on conclusions. But you definitely can not use those criticisms to add validity to any conclusions either. So I don't see how this world view does anybody any good.
At some point, you see nazis, you say "those are bad", and you just know you're right about it. In that sense, morals are a true compass when faced with endless doubt that can creep in if you want to be maximally scientific about things.
No pressing need to point out the obvious criticisms. Fry was already roundly criticized up and down for saying it. But it has become my favorite quote about the way people talk about ideologies.
In this case, I would say that the nuance lies not in whether it is good or bad, but in understanding the constellation of factors that would lead someone to hold the objectionable viewpoint. Reducing the issue down to the question of whether it's good or bad is itself the simplistic mentality that Fry was very explicitly criticizing.
There are plenty of reasons why one would be nazi. One is fear, other ressentment yet other that you was raised that way by parents. And yet others grown to be cruel, aggresive and sadistic and nazism makes them feel like it is good thing.
However, being clear on whether it is good or bad or even dangerous and what is cost of they get their way is practically speaking super important. Understanding that is more important then understanding poor them and having emphaty toward them. Otherwise they will use you emphaty to convert you to their case, bit by bit. It is not simplistic, it is values that you need to keep in mind lest you lose the lm.
> However, being clear on whether it is good or bad or even dangerous and what is cost of they get their way is practically speaking super important.
Yes, it's important. It's important that children learn this, or sort it out by very early adulthood. That is what is meant by infantile. In my opinion, this is not a serious problem for the vast majority of civil folk. I do not understand the value in grown adults belaboring it. It's baby food. Eat grownup food.
Actually, grown ups have bigger problem keeping this straigt. Grown ups made originally nazism happen after all. Grown ups dont want to insult nazi because of career or just trying to look nice and rational. Then again, young German soldiers were more cruel then old ones I read in historical accounts.
I don't know what you mean by eating grown up food here. There were quite a few unapologetic grown ups in history who were quite inflexible in their values.
Maybe it is another attempt to shame that has nothing to do with what actual grown ups do, for better or worst.
Serious question. What have I been falsely indoctrinated about? What should I have been exposed to as an alternate view on nazis? Do history books count as "indoctrination"?
To your other point, I would imagine showing aliens concentration camps would make them recoil in horror, yes.
The issue is not whether Nazis were/are bad. You can feel safe in the assumption that all but an extreme fringe minority are in consensus that Nazi philosophies and practices were horrific beyond comprehension.
What we should contemplate and discuss, however, is what were the economic and cultural conditions that led to the rise of Nazism in Europe in the 30s, and how it came to be accepted, supported and enabled/served by such a large proportion of the population.
Only by fully understanding these issues can we take effective measures to ensure such a movement never takes hold ever again, and ensure that we as individuals are equipped with the strength and judgement to avoid succumbing to populist bigotry any time we see it.
But, IMO, morality and ethics are subjective, so for a minority of people who don't share this consensus, yes, nazis aren't bad.
An alien race that has constructed a feudal slave society might not object to concentration camps at all. They might love the idea.
Nazis, from a purely objective standpoint, are not bad. But not good either. What they did is facts.
Only when the human observer comes in, ie, you and me, we introduce morality and you and me both think that those things are bad and should not be done.
Or how Death expressed it in Discworld; "take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy"
Would an amended statement make more sense?
“The nazis were bad to the degree that badness is a thing.”
Although it seems a bit silly to phrase things that way.
To the degree that silliness is a thing of course.
Personally I believe that my notion of bad, good, evil and angels is purely subjective. Doesn't mean they have less value. I merely acknowledge the value is subjective. Like how a childhood toy holds sentimental value.
Can you expand on that? It sounds like it may contain a very interesting perspective, but I'm not quite sure what you mean.
It doesn't matter what ideology you're battling for or against. It's the genre of ideological flamewar itself that's damaging here, and therefore unwelcome, and therefore will get you banned if you keep doing it.
By "the users", do you mean four or so hyperpartisan ideological zealots who exploit your rules to get their rush of moral supremacy by downvoting instead of commenting to refute the points?
Because downvoting is technically political activity and your rules totally allow that all day long.
* If you are without a doubt, you are wrong
If you can't fathom the other side and where they're coming from, you, are in fact, biased beyond listening to facts, and are likely wrong.
* Words matter
As my grandma said, "If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all."