7 ms·

The world is so weird. I never understood the motive behind tyrannizing other people. How is that winning at anything other than being an asshole? Why don't peo

The world is so weird. I never understood the motive behind tyrannizing other people. How is that winning at anything other than being an asshole? Why don't people just leave other people alone? Is it so much different to tyrannize a woman for being feminine, or just being attractive? Most of us are instinctively disgusted by that--or at least claim to be?

madez 8y ago
There are books that are outrageously famous that say that gay people are bad. Many people find these books so convincing that they adopt the books' views as their own.
rebuilder 8y ago
Certain types of social orders depend on strict control of social mores. Hell, arguably all do to some extent - try walking down the street naked and see how that goes...
- wallace_f 8y ago
  I mean, I guess what I was trying to ask is do people not know or feel that it is wrong to not just leave other people alone if they aren't, themselves, bothering anybody? Why do people reject that? It's literally what freedom and liberty is, and it is the exact opposite of authority and oppression.
vijaybritto 8y ago
Some people feel powerful when they persecute others.
labster 8y ago
Isn't the original purpose of society to control access to sex?
- coldtea 8y ago
  No, the original purpose of society is for its members to leverage each other to achieve more / be safer etc than as lone individuals. Controlling access to sex was one of the ways societies found to achieve those goals. For a simple example, communities with much laxer sex rules, found themselves frequently torn by relationship related feuds. Requiring (and punishing non-adherence) to sticking to some fixed husband/wife is what they found to prevent (not absolutely solve) such issues. They then invented religious and other justifications for the practice to normalize it further. Certain kinds of marital arrangement also helped keep money in the same extended family, etc. Different such goals evolved different strategies to achieve them.
  - roenxi 8y ago
    Are you certain about that thesis? "Lax sex rules" haven't torn apart the modern world and were probably quite prevalent through history. Plausibly, in the good old days before washing machines when keeping a home together was a gargantuan task, the economic equilibrium just happened to be 1:1 male/female pairings. Examining the substance of marriage law in England, for example, suggests that most of meat of law and custom revolves around inheritance law. People get swallowed up in the pageantry, but the legal trouble starts when assets are involved.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Are you certain about that thesis? "Lax sex rules" haven't torn apart the modern world For one, we now have more elaborate laws and enforcement of them, and people are much more docile and civilized. We don't just go and beat each other up like in communities of yore. Try an extramarital affair in old rural community though (not even an ancient one), and watch what happens (e.g. the husband blowing your brain with a shotgun). Second, depends on the definition of "torn apart". E.g.: https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v3i9/U0VQMTQ0MA==.pdf https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v3i9/U0VQMTQ0MA==.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=167327 https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=1673... https://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=edd_diss https://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756061616300957 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175606161... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593091/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593091/ And let's not even add "crimes of passion" (what those societies tried to avoid). E.g.: In New York City, 1 in 4 homeless households became homeless because of domestic violence or crimes of passion. Nearly 15% of women have been injured by an act that could be classified as a crime of passion. https://brandongaille.com/27-intriguing-crimes-of-passion-statistics/ https://brandongaille.com/27-intriguing-crimes-of-passion-st... >and were probably quite prevalent through history.* I you mean that some people always had all kinds of sex relations, yes (nobody said adherence and enforcement was or could be absolute or affect the powerful as much as the masses). If you mean that there were fringe societies (e.g. those studied by ethnology) that had lax sex rules, then also yes. If you mean that big well known historical societies at large embraced and accepted lax sexual behaviors, that's wrong. E.g.: https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-myth-of-the-ancient-greek-gay-utopia-88397 https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-myth-of-the-anc...
codegeek 8y ago
It is human nature. Whenever we have moments of weakness, we tend to blame the "others" because it is easy to do so and makes you feel stronger than you actually are. Same goes with bullies. They are really weak inside and all it takes is one strong person to stand up to them.
vinni2 8y ago
I think it comes down to their own definition of being “normal” for someone. I think it is this attitude of “if they are not like me or do not meet my definition of normal they should be tyrannized” is the problem. It also has to do with not having seen examples of such people leading normal life.
skocznymroczny 8y ago
How about tyrannizing "far-right fascists"? Anti-abortion folks?
- madengr 8y ago
  How about “far-left communists”? Maybe because those are arbitrary definitions, defined by the opposite side. If Trump is a far-right fascist, what does that make Hitler?
- wtallis 8y ago
  What sort of tyrannization are you referring to those sects being subjected to? It doesn't seem like they're currently being subjected to anything worse than some verbal disparagement, which is hardly comparable to the kind of discrimination many other minorities suffer. Are you hypothesizing that right-wing extremists might come to be discriminated against in some consequential fashion comparable to criminalization of their everyday lives or even milder stuff like systemic economic inequality?
  - jlawson 8y ago
    You can't work/belong to in most media companies, any major film/TV company, any major tech company, almost any university, many law societies and groups, many medical organizations. If you're discovered, you'll be fired, shamed, and blacklisted from the industry more broadly (see: James Damore). You essentially can't have a normal career in tech, media, journalism, acting, law, medicine, or any academic field. You can sometimes have a career, but it'll be highly constrained by your identity as a hated Other for the power class. You can have a little irrelevant job somewhere, but watch out: If any attention is drawn to you, you'll be fired there as well. One example is Tony Hovater: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nationalist.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nat... He was fired from his job at a restaurant, couldn't pay rent, and people started posting his home address online. So he and his wife lost their home fleeing physical violence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/29/nazi-sympathizer-profiled-by-the-new-york-times-says-he-lost-his-job-and-soon-his-home https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/2... The Times article also notes he feared violence (specifically from armed thugs at his wedding). Which isn't surprising considering other violent incidents, like the guy who tried to gun down Steve Scalise at a baseball game, countless petty screaming and grabbings and punchings of anyone wearing a MAGA hat, etc. It happens at every level, too. Not just Google developers telling Damore "I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. Fuck you." But even high-level Democratic party politicans openly calling for Trump admin officials to be harassed in every public space: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rep-waters-draws-criticism-saying-trump-officials-should-be-harassed-n886311 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rep-waters-dr... This sort of thing filters up and down; Maxine Waters said that because it's a fairly normal attitude in her peer group. Another example - the violent mobbing of Charles Murray and Allison Stanger. Stanger ended up in the hospital in a neck brace. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/middlebury-free-speech-violence/518667/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/middleb... This is off the top of my head. There's lots more.
coldtea 8y ago
>The world is so weird. I never understood the motive behind tyrannizing other people. How is that winning at anything other than being an asshole? Well, read up on the evolution of moral systems and such. Those rules are not entirely arbitrary (even the ones coming from a religious origin, those are still manmade and follow certain rationales). The problem is that such laws don't always make sense beyond their expiration date (when conditions changed etc), but can still be held in high esteem due to their existing stronghold.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  What I am assuming is the golden rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. Don't you think the general population understands that? When people ignore it, we generally call that bad. When people don't understand that, we generally call them psychopaths. Is this really controversial? I mean, as a thought experiment, do you really not internally know that bothering other people who are bot bothering you is wrong and ugly? Most people don't agree with that? Edit: I am being downvoted, so this is apparently fairly controversial. That's unfortunate, in my mind. I personally believe that the democracy, liberty and prosperity that exists in the world today would not have been possible without America, its founders, and others who argued for this kind of liberty--most notably enlightenment figures. So I guess if you disagree with it, you're pretty lucky to happen to be here.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >What I am assuming is the golden rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. Don't you think the general population understands that? When people ignore it, we generally call that bad. When people don't understand that, we generally call them psychopaths. Is this really controversial? No, but it doesn't settle much. For one, it's not always about how people are treated, but also about stopping things you think are bad from happening. If you think e.g. that forests are good, you'd want to punish people who burn them, even if they did nothing wrong to you. Similarly, if you are an ancient citizen and think people engaging in gay sex weakens your society (e.g. because these people don't have kids and your community will have less people to continue it, and fight and protect it) you'll try to stop people from doing that. >I personally believe that the democracy, liberty and prosperity that exists in the world today would not have been possible without America, its founders, and others who argued for this kind of liberty And I believe that its influence has been overplayed and is insignificant (if not negative). Starting from the genocide of the native Americans, to slavery of blacks, way after Europe had put an end to it, to treatment of chinese and other immigrants up to early 20th century, to inheriting old European colonialism after WWII and extending it with neo-colonialism, to promoting puritanism, neoliberal policies, the "war on drugs", global interventions and befriending and establishing dictatorships and banana republics, promoting crappy mass culture, unhealthy food culture, and total consumerism without regard for the environment, and so on.). Plus the unbearable exceptionalism and nationalism.
axilmar 8y ago
Homosexuality is disturbing to people because their brain cannot find relevant patterns that have to do with homosexuality-related experiences (sights, images etc). And when the brain doesn't find good pattern matches, it alerts the person of something very strange and potentially dangerous going on. Morality systems come on top of this fundamental fact, because morality systems are just the conscious justifications we give to our feelings.
- Delmania 8y ago
  > Homosexuality is disturbing to people because their brain cannot find relevant patterns that have to do with homosexuality-related experiences (sights, images etc). I'd like to echo this. A while back, a coworker and friend of mine who is homosexual took me to a coffee shop that caters primarily to homosexual men. I had never been with him before in that social context, but his actions did fall within the stereotypes and I did feel myself uncomfortable with the situation. It wasn't that big of a deal, as I recognized my response. What was more "eye-opening" was that later, he has the same reaction to those situations when he's with his heterosexual friends. He even went so far as to say he finds the concept of heterosexual sex as digusting.
  - dagw 8y ago
    I did feel myself uncomfortable with the situation But was that discomfort specifically related to homosexuality or just the general discomfort one feels when one finds oneself in an entirely alien social context? If you where to go with him to that coffee shop twice a week for a couple of month do you think you'd still find it uncomfortable?
- woodruffw 8y ago
  > Morality systems come on top of this fundamental fact, because morality systems are just the conscious justifications we give to our feelings. This is a serious claim, one that moral philosophers (even those inclined towards moral fictionalism/nonrealism) have issues with. Just two of them: * This account fails to distinguish between moral beliefs and cultural taboos. Individuals tend to think that they can justify both, but challenging taboos is more likely to result in confabulation -- individuals are willing to concede hypothetical concerns in their moral beliefs, but remain committed to their taboos even in the face of good evidence against them. * Moral philosophy, as it exists today, doesn't seek to provide justification to homophobia, gender discrimination, &c. The dominant metaethical views don't give any consideration at all to these particulars, but rather accept as conclusions (via utilitarian calculus, via a supreme principle, &c) that homophobia and the rest are all morally unjustified. Where does this fit into the pattern matching to feelings to confabulated justifications pipeline?
jlawson 8y ago
I think it is worth looking for the rational (that is to say, non-moralistic) cause. The fact the gays are pressured to act straight across in nearly every society in such similar and intense ways indicates that there's likely a common cause. e.g. If one culture hates dogs and kills them on sight, you might say that culture has a prejudice against dogs. If 95% of cultures hated dogs and killed them on sight, you should start to think there is a deeper reason for that (especially considering how useful dogs can be). In the case of gay-shaming, the obvious common cause is evolutionary: It's people trying to have more grandkids. If your kid is gay, and decides to go off and have gay sex for the rest of his/her life, he/she won't reproduce. Your gene line ends. However, if you pressure/shame/tyrannize your gay kid into a reproductive relationship, your genes replicate into grandkids (who likely won't be gay themselves). Your gene line continues. This also applies to brothers, sisters, and other kin. The reproductive benefit of pressuring a gay relative to act straight is comparable to saving them from death, since the outcome of 'acting gay' and 'dead' is evolutionarily similar. (Of course a living gay relative can help other relatives raise their kids, so it's not identical to being dead. Some have argued that the "helpful gay uncle" effect would counteract the evolutionary cost of homosexuality. But the math doesn't work; a childless relative isn't so much more helpful than a relative with kids that deliberately childless individuals replicate their genes better than ones who have their own kids.) This explains why the pressure to act straight is so strong and vicious - it comes from the same place as the pressure to not die. So, given a population of people, some who have a gene that makes them pressure gay kids to act straight, and some who don't, over time the pressuring gene will spread through the population. And here we are. And just to ward off the reflexive moralizing and personal attacks: There's no moral content to our evolutionary history, any more than there's moral content to a lion eating a baby gazelle alive. Please don't fall for the naturalistic fallacy and start attacking as though I'm saying natural equals good. Lots of things that are natural are not good. Understanding the world requires us to be able to separate rational understanding what is, from a moral judgment of what we should do. We should be adult enough here to make that distinction.
- phakding 8y ago
  > In the case of gay-shaming, the obvious common cause is evolutionary: It's people trying to have more grandkids. I have to disagree. I don't think people who opposr and hate gay people are doing it for evolutionary purposes. I haven't met anybody who thinks this guy is gay which meand he won't be making any kids, so let's hate him. Hate comes from much more fundamental place than that. For majority of people it's not "normal" hence different. And for majority what's different is scary. The same reason why immigrants of different skin color than majority population are hated. The same reason applies to extremely short, extremely tall, people with deformities, person with vitiligo in black/brown countries etc are treated differently, made fun of.

madez 8y ago

There are books that are outrageously famous that say that gay people are bad. Many people find these books so convincing that they adopt the books' views as their own.

rebuilder 8y ago

Certain types of social orders depend on strict control of social mores. Hell, arguably all do to some extent - try walking down the street naked and see how that goes...

wallace_f 8y ago
I mean, I guess what I was trying to ask is do people not know or feel that it is wrong to not just leave other people alone if they aren't, themselves, bothering anybody? Why do people reject that? It's literally what freedom and liberty is, and it is the exact opposite of authority and oppression.

vijaybritto 8y ago

Some people feel powerful when they persecute others.

labster 8y ago

Isn't the original purpose of society to control access to sex?

coldtea 8y ago
No, the original purpose of society is for its members to leverage each other to achieve more / be safer etc than as lone individuals. Controlling access to sex was one of the ways societies found to achieve those goals. For a simple example, communities with much laxer sex rules, found themselves frequently torn by relationship related feuds. Requiring (and punishing non-adherence) to sticking to some fixed husband/wife is what they found to prevent (not absolutely solve) such issues. They then invented religious and other justifications for the practice to normalize it further. Certain kinds of marital arrangement also helped keep money in the same extended family, etc. Different such goals evolved different strategies to achieve them.
- roenxi 8y ago
  Are you certain about that thesis? "Lax sex rules" haven't torn apart the modern world and were probably quite prevalent through history. Plausibly, in the good old days before washing machines when keeping a home together was a gargantuan task, the economic equilibrium just happened to be 1:1 male/female pairings. Examining the substance of marriage law in England, for example, suggests that most of meat of law and custom revolves around inheritance law. People get swallowed up in the pageantry, but the legal trouble starts when assets are involved.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Are you certain about that thesis? "Lax sex rules" haven't torn apart the modern world For one, we now have more elaborate laws and enforcement of them, and people are much more docile and civilized. We don't just go and beat each other up like in communities of yore. Try an extramarital affair in old rural community though (not even an ancient one), and watch what happens (e.g. the husband blowing your brain with a shotgun). Second, depends on the definition of "torn apart". E.g.: https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v3i9/U0VQMTQ0MA==.pdf https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v3i9/U0VQMTQ0MA==.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=167327 https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=1673... https://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=edd_diss https://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756061616300957 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175606161... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593091/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593091/ And let's not even add "crimes of passion" (what those societies tried to avoid). E.g.: In New York City, 1 in 4 homeless households became homeless because of domestic violence or crimes of passion. Nearly 15% of women have been injured by an act that could be classified as a crime of passion. https://brandongaille.com/27-intriguing-crimes-of-passion-statistics/ https://brandongaille.com/27-intriguing-crimes-of-passion-st... >and were probably quite prevalent through history.* I you mean that some people always had all kinds of sex relations, yes (nobody said adherence and enforcement was or could be absolute or affect the powerful as much as the masses). If you mean that there were fringe societies (e.g. those studied by ethnology) that had lax sex rules, then also yes. If you mean that big well known historical societies at large embraced and accepted lax sexual behaviors, that's wrong. E.g.: https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-myth-of-the-ancient-greek-gay-utopia-88397 https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-myth-of-the-anc...

codegeek 8y ago

It is human nature. Whenever we have moments of weakness, we tend to blame the "others" because it is easy to do so and makes you feel stronger than you actually are. Same goes with bullies. They are really weak inside and all it takes is one strong person to stand up to them.

vinni2 8y ago

I think it comes down to their own definition of being “normal” for someone. I think it is this attitude of “if they are not like me or do not meet my definition of normal they should be tyrannized” is the problem. It also has to do with not having seen examples of such people leading normal life.

skocznymroczny 8y ago

How about tyrannizing "far-right fascists"? Anti-abortion folks?

madengr 8y ago
How about “far-left communists”? Maybe because those are arbitrary definitions, defined by the opposite side. If Trump is a far-right fascist, what does that make Hitler?
wtallis 8y ago
What sort of tyrannization are you referring to those sects being subjected to? It doesn't seem like they're currently being subjected to anything worse than some verbal disparagement, which is hardly comparable to the kind of discrimination many other minorities suffer. Are you hypothesizing that right-wing extremists might come to be discriminated against in some consequential fashion comparable to criminalization of their everyday lives or even milder stuff like systemic economic inequality?
- jlawson 8y ago
  You can't work/belong to in most media companies, any major film/TV company, any major tech company, almost any university, many law societies and groups, many medical organizations. If you're discovered, you'll be fired, shamed, and blacklisted from the industry more broadly (see: James Damore). You essentially can't have a normal career in tech, media, journalism, acting, law, medicine, or any academic field. You can sometimes have a career, but it'll be highly constrained by your identity as a hated Other for the power class. You can have a little irrelevant job somewhere, but watch out: If any attention is drawn to you, you'll be fired there as well. One example is Tony Hovater: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nationalist.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nat... He was fired from his job at a restaurant, couldn't pay rent, and people started posting his home address online. So he and his wife lost their home fleeing physical violence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/29/nazi-sympathizer-profiled-by-the-new-york-times-says-he-lost-his-job-and-soon-his-home https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/2... The Times article also notes he feared violence (specifically from armed thugs at his wedding). Which isn't surprising considering other violent incidents, like the guy who tried to gun down Steve Scalise at a baseball game, countless petty screaming and grabbings and punchings of anyone wearing a MAGA hat, etc. It happens at every level, too. Not just Google developers telling Damore "I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. Fuck you." But even high-level Democratic party politicans openly calling for Trump admin officials to be harassed in every public space: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rep-waters-draws-criticism-saying-trump-officials-should-be-harassed-n886311 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rep-waters-dr... This sort of thing filters up and down; Maxine Waters said that because it's a fairly normal attitude in her peer group. Another example - the violent mobbing of Charles Murray and Allison Stanger. Stanger ended up in the hospital in a neck brace. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/middlebury-free-speech-violence/518667/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/middleb... This is off the top of my head. There's lots more.

coldtea 8y ago

>The world is so weird. I never understood the motive behind tyrannizing other people. How is that winning at anything other than being an asshole? Well, read up on the evolution of moral systems and such. Those rules are not entirely arbitrary (even the ones coming from a religious origin, those are still manmade and follow certain rationales). The problem is that such laws don't always make sense beyond their expiration date (when conditions changed etc), but can still be held in high esteem due to their existing stronghold.

wallace_f 8y ago
What I am assuming is the golden rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. Don't you think the general population understands that? When people ignore it, we generally call that bad. When people don't understand that, we generally call them psychopaths. Is this really controversial? I mean, as a thought experiment, do you really not internally know that bothering other people who are bot bothering you is wrong and ugly? Most people don't agree with that? Edit: I am being downvoted, so this is apparently fairly controversial. That's unfortunate, in my mind. I personally believe that the democracy, liberty and prosperity that exists in the world today would not have been possible without America, its founders, and others who argued for this kind of liberty--most notably enlightenment figures. So I guess if you disagree with it, you're pretty lucky to happen to be here.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >What I am assuming is the golden rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. Don't you think the general population understands that? When people ignore it, we generally call that bad. When people don't understand that, we generally call them psychopaths. Is this really controversial? No, but it doesn't settle much. For one, it's not always about how people are treated, but also about stopping things you think are bad from happening. If you think e.g. that forests are good, you'd want to punish people who burn them, even if they did nothing wrong to you. Similarly, if you are an ancient citizen and think people engaging in gay sex weakens your society (e.g. because these people don't have kids and your community will have less people to continue it, and fight and protect it) you'll try to stop people from doing that. >I personally believe that the democracy, liberty and prosperity that exists in the world today would not have been possible without America, its founders, and others who argued for this kind of liberty And I believe that its influence has been overplayed and is insignificant (if not negative). Starting from the genocide of the native Americans, to slavery of blacks, way after Europe had put an end to it, to treatment of chinese and other immigrants up to early 20th century, to inheriting old European colonialism after WWII and extending it with neo-colonialism, to promoting puritanism, neoliberal policies, the "war on drugs", global interventions and befriending and establishing dictatorships and banana republics, promoting crappy mass culture, unhealthy food culture, and total consumerism without regard for the environment, and so on.). Plus the unbearable exceptionalism and nationalism.

axilmar 8y ago

Homosexuality is disturbing to people because their brain cannot find relevant patterns that have to do with homosexuality-related experiences (sights, images etc). And when the brain doesn't find good pattern matches, it alerts the person of something very strange and potentially dangerous going on. Morality systems come on top of this fundamental fact, because morality systems are just the conscious justifications we give to our feelings.

Delmania 8y ago
> Homosexuality is disturbing to people because their brain cannot find relevant patterns that have to do with homosexuality-related experiences (sights, images etc). I'd like to echo this. A while back, a coworker and friend of mine who is homosexual took me to a coffee shop that caters primarily to homosexual men. I had never been with him before in that social context, but his actions did fall within the stereotypes and I did feel myself uncomfortable with the situation. It wasn't that big of a deal, as I recognized my response. What was more "eye-opening" was that later, he has the same reaction to those situations when he's with his heterosexual friends. He even went so far as to say he finds the concept of heterosexual sex as digusting.
- dagw 8y ago
  I did feel myself uncomfortable with the situation But was that discomfort specifically related to homosexuality or just the general discomfort one feels when one finds oneself in an entirely alien social context? If you where to go with him to that coffee shop twice a week for a couple of month do you think you'd still find it uncomfortable?
woodruffw 8y ago
> Morality systems come on top of this fundamental fact, because morality systems are just the conscious justifications we give to our feelings. This is a serious claim, one that moral philosophers (even those inclined towards moral fictionalism/nonrealism) have issues with. Just two of them: * This account fails to distinguish between moral beliefs and cultural taboos. Individuals tend to think that they can justify both, but challenging taboos is more likely to result in confabulation -- individuals are willing to concede hypothetical concerns in their moral beliefs, but remain committed to their taboos even in the face of good evidence against them. * Moral philosophy, as it exists today, doesn't seek to provide justification to homophobia, gender discrimination, &c. The dominant metaethical views don't give any consideration at all to these particulars, but rather accept as conclusions (via utilitarian calculus, via a supreme principle, &c) that homophobia and the rest are all morally unjustified. Where does this fit into the pattern matching to feelings to confabulated justifications pipeline?

jlawson 8y ago

I think it is worth looking for the rational (that is to say, non-moralistic) cause. The fact the gays are pressured to act straight across in nearly every society in such similar and intense ways indicates that there's likely a common cause. e.g. If one culture hates dogs and kills them on sight, you might say that culture has a prejudice against dogs. If 95% of cultures hated dogs and killed them on sight, you should start to think there is a deeper reason for that (especially considering how useful dogs can be). In the case of gay-shaming, the obvious common cause is evolutionary: It's people trying to have more grandkids. If your kid is gay, and decides to go off and have gay sex for the rest of his/her life, he/she won't reproduce. Your gene line ends. However, if you pressure/shame/tyrannize your gay kid into a reproductive relationship, your genes replicate into grandkids (who likely won't be gay themselves). Your gene line continues. This also applies to brothers, sisters, and other kin. The reproductive benefit of pressuring a gay relative to act straight is comparable to saving them from death, since the outcome of 'acting gay' and 'dead' is evolutionarily similar. (Of course a living gay relative can help other relatives raise their kids, so it's not identical to being dead. Some have argued that the "helpful gay uncle" effect would counteract the evolutionary cost of homosexuality. But the math doesn't work; a childless relative isn't so much more helpful than a relative with kids that deliberately childless individuals replicate their genes better than ones who have their own kids.) This explains why the pressure to act straight is so strong and vicious - it comes from the same place as the pressure to not die. So, given a population of people, some who have a gene that makes them pressure gay kids to act straight, and some who don't, over time the pressuring gene will spread through the population. And here we are. And just to ward off the reflexive moralizing and personal attacks: There's no moral content to our evolutionary history, any more than there's moral content to a lion eating a baby gazelle alive. Please don't fall for the naturalistic fallacy and start attacking as though I'm saying natural equals good. Lots of things that are natural are not good. Understanding the world requires us to be able to separate rational understanding what is, from a moral judgment of what we should do. We should be adult enough here to make that distinction.

phakding 8y ago
> In the case of gay-shaming, the obvious common cause is evolutionary: It's people trying to have more grandkids. I have to disagree. I don't think people who opposr and hate gay people are doing it for evolutionary purposes. I haven't met anybody who thinks this guy is gay which meand he won't be making any kids, so let's hate him. Hate comes from much more fundamental place than that. For majority of people it's not "normal" hence different. And for majority what's different is scary. The same reason why immigrants of different skin color than majority population are hated. The same reason applies to extremely short, extremely tall, people with deformities, person with vitiligo in black/brown countries etc are treated differently, made fun of.