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So, here's the other downside to debating the merits of the position "hey, maybe we shouldn't exterminate people because of their race or their religion" - it m

So, here's the other downside to debating the merits of the position "hey, maybe we shouldn't exterminate people because of their race or their religion" - it makes it impossible to progress. What do you mean, black people deserve the same job opportunities as white people? We haven't even established that we shouldn't be killing them yet! What do you mean, black people shouldn't be subject to extrajudicial killings in the streets by police officers? My friend here says that we should be rounding them up and shooting them by the dozens. There are always going to be people who think that some disadvantaged group should be mistreated. If society constantly has to sit down and explain to them why being racist or sexist or anti-semitic or whatever is wrong, then there's no opportunity to try and make actual progress in terms of helping those disadvantaged groups. Every new person who comes in with a terrible opinion sets the discourse back to square one of "killing people is wrong", and when progress is an incremental thing, getting set back to square one repeatedly means that progress doesn't get made. At some point, you need to be able to say "No. That viewpoint is vile, and it doesn't get a place at the table. When you're willing to treat people like people, we'll entertain what you have to say, but you need to behave with a certain amount of decorum before you get to participate in actual discussion." It's like if you had to explain to your child why smearing feces on the table and plateware isn't acceptable, and you had to do it before every meal. You don't have any time to actually sit down and eat, because every single time you do, you need to explain that no, smearing shit on the plates is wrong. Don't do that.

indubitable 9y ago
The problem is that saying "No, I refuse to discuss that" isn't changing any minds. If anything I think it tends to strengthen the resolve of the individuals holding said views. When you just tell people to stop saying things, in the minds of many it's going to indirectly give weight to those views. I think if people took the time to actually talk to other people they would find that though you may disagree with their views, they tend to actually have rationale for those views. And that rationale can expose logical flaws. To take a slightly less controversial example, I've managed to successfully discuss climate change with a good number of people that felt it was 'fake.' People that do things like effectively scream '97%, idiots!' and move on do a great disservice. This sort of dismissal or appeal to authority is a big part of why there are so many of these people. It absolutely strengthens their resolve since they feel their views cannot be countered logically. And indeed there is more to their views than the satire we created in our heads of them thinking little more than 'dur, it's a Chinese conspiracy.' Instead when you talk about the interplay between long wavelength energy, short wavelength energy and how they both react to CO2 explaining how precisely it traps energy (and how you can even create experiments at home to show the effect), you can start to explain things in a way that very few people seem willing to do. And willing is probably the wrong word. I think it's more accurate to say that many people who do acknowledge climate change don't actually understand it on any more sophisticated level than those that deny it - and so arguments resort to vitriol instead of logic. And I think that lack of knowledge is far more transparent than most people realize. So you end up with two sides, equally uninformed, slinging mud at one another and both taking their own self assigned moral high-ground. The point here is that refusing to discuss things or scolding adults for holding such views, does not make them go away - and I think there is a very strong argument to be made that it does quite the opposite. For the most extreme example, one needs only look to who is currently the head of our country. And in this desire to refuse to even discuss things with people, 'we' even did things such as managing to pressure Elon Musk into drawing a line and ultimately leaving the president's advisory council. And was that a good idea? He's still just as legitimate a president with just as much control. The only difference is now there's one fewer voice of logic and reason trying to encourage him to do the right thing. And while those voices may ultimately have failed to achieve anything, their absence makes such a possibility a foregone conclusion.
- CocaKoala 9y ago
  Your less controversial example doesn't quite map, though, because climate change is something that can be tested and observed; like you said, you can construct experiments at home to help people understand it. There's no experiment I can construct that helps people understand that black people are people too. There's no science I can point to which establishes that women should be treated the same as men. There's no journal I can cite that explains why Jews don't deserve to be rounded up and exterminated. Stuff like that is axiomatic; I can't construct a logical argument to show you that people deserve to be treated like people, it's just the case. If you think that some subgroup of humanity is less than human, I'm probably not going to be very effective at changing your mind; any counterexample I show you can be written off with "well, they're some of the ~good ones~, but it's all the others who are the problem". Change really has to come from within on this one. And I think your extreme example of our president kind of works in my favour, as opposed to yours. Trump said and did (and continues to say and do) a lot of extremely heinous shit. We have him on video discussing how much he loves to assault women, and how they just let him do it. And instead of saying "No, that's not acceptable, full stop. This is wrong and people who do this are wrong", there was a lot of "oh well it's just boy talk, they were just chatting like boys do in the locker room, it wasn't really sexual assault because he said the women let him do it", and it turned into a debate about whether or not sexually assaulting women is wrong and whether or not bragging about sexually assaulting women is wrong. And now Trump is president, despite the fact that he habitually sexually assaulted women and is proud of the fact that he habitually sexually assaulted women. By providing a platform for logical debate of something that is heinous, the heinous action gained legitimacy and ended up being okay.

indubitable 9y ago

The problem is that saying "No, I refuse to discuss that" isn't changing any minds. If anything I think it tends to strengthen the resolve of the individuals holding said views. When you just tell people to stop saying things, in the minds of many it's going to indirectly give weight to those views. I think if people took the time to actually talk to other people they would find that though you may disagree with their views, they tend to actually have rationale for those views. And that rationale can expose logical flaws. To take a slightly less controversial example, I've managed to successfully discuss climate change with a good number of people that felt it was 'fake.' People that do things like effectively scream '97%, idiots!' and move on do a great disservice. This sort of dismissal or appeal to authority is a big part of why there are so many of these people. It absolutely strengthens their resolve since they feel their views cannot be countered logically. And indeed there is more to their views than the satire we created in our heads of them thinking little more than 'dur, it's a Chinese conspiracy.' Instead when you talk about the interplay between long wavelength energy, short wavelength energy and how they both react to CO2 explaining how precisely it traps energy (and how you can even create experiments at home to show the effect), you can start to explain things in a way that very few people seem willing to do. And willing is probably the wrong word. I think it's more accurate to say that many people who do acknowledge climate change don't actually understand it on any more sophisticated level than those that deny it - and so arguments resort to vitriol instead of logic. And I think that lack of knowledge is far more transparent than most people realize. So you end up with two sides, equally uninformed, slinging mud at one another and both taking their own self assigned moral high-ground. The point here is that refusing to discuss things or scolding adults for holding such views, does not make them go away - and I think there is a very strong argument to be made that it does quite the opposite. For the most extreme example, one needs only look to who is currently the head of our country. And in this desire to refuse to even discuss things with people, 'we' even did things such as managing to pressure Elon Musk into drawing a line and ultimately leaving the president's advisory council. And was that a good idea? He's still just as legitimate a president with just as much control. The only difference is now there's one fewer voice of logic and reason trying to encourage him to do the right thing. And while those voices may ultimately have failed to achieve anything, their absence makes such a possibility a foregone conclusion.

CocaKoala 9y ago
Your less controversial example doesn't quite map, though, because climate change is something that can be tested and observed; like you said, you can construct experiments at home to help people understand it. There's no experiment I can construct that helps people understand that black people are people too. There's no science I can point to which establishes that women should be treated the same as men. There's no journal I can cite that explains why Jews don't deserve to be rounded up and exterminated. Stuff like that is axiomatic; I can't construct a logical argument to show you that people deserve to be treated like people, it's just the case. If you think that some subgroup of humanity is less than human, I'm probably not going to be very effective at changing your mind; any counterexample I show you can be written off with "well, they're some of the ~good ones~, but it's all the others who are the problem". Change really has to come from within on this one. And I think your extreme example of our president kind of works in my favour, as opposed to yours. Trump said and did (and continues to say and do) a lot of extremely heinous shit. We have him on video discussing how much he loves to assault women, and how they just let him do it. And instead of saying "No, that's not acceptable, full stop. This is wrong and people who do this are wrong", there was a lot of "oh well it's just boy talk, they were just chatting like boys do in the locker room, it wasn't really sexual assault because he said the women let him do it", and it turned into a debate about whether or not sexually assaulting women is wrong and whether or not bragging about sexually assaulting women is wrong. And now Trump is president, despite the fact that he habitually sexually assaulted women and is proud of the fact that he habitually sexually assaulted women. By providing a platform for logical debate of something that is heinous, the heinous action gained legitimacy and ended up being okay.