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It's not an open marketplace and each side is is fighting a different fight: >Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their

It's not an open marketplace and each side is is fighting a different fight: >Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

noego 8y ago
What makes it not an open marketplace? The very bias introduced by platform like YouTube which you seem to be defending? Is the average person so dumb that they cannot distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert"? If that's how you feel about the average person, why do you still favor democracy?
- minikites 8y ago
  People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" (again, not related to their intelligence, this is a developed skill). https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html >We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.
  - luckylion 8y ago
    > People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. Citation needed. Obviously, people from the humanities believe that they are very important and should be paid a lot to shepherd society, but that's not enough to convince me. Edit: Sorry, due to serial flagging thanks to this I can't reply. I don't care enough about this to retry later and get flagged again. Emotions apparently run too high if it concerns worldviews.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - minikites 8y ago
      Given your hostile opening, I'll start by asking what you think that evidence would look like and what you would find convincing.
    - pas 8y ago
      I don't consider myself from "the humanities", but the lack of applied rationality skills in the general population is dangerously severe. (Look at how populism spread by convincing people via the cheapest of rhetorical appeals to ego and arrogance.)
  - themacguffinman 8y ago
    So not dumb-dumb, but dumb for all intents and purposes of making decisions in a democracy? What's the difference? At the core of your argument is the idea that people in a democracy aren't able to do their singular duty: make a reasonable choice based on available information, so they need to be coddled and only fed information that is "fair", "fair" as determined by liberal arts majors I guess. And if anti semitic arguments are so unfairly effective, why hasn't it won? All the major platforms have a lot of anti semitic speech that they haven't been able to filter out, and it's remarkably easy to find on the internet, so why hasn't it entranced the majority of non-liberal-arts majors? Why are the masses of average people calling for the removal of anti semitic content - an act built on a rejection of anti semitic ideas - instead of being enthralled by it?

noego 8y ago

What makes it not an open marketplace? The very bias introduced by platform like YouTube which you seem to be defending? Is the average person so dumb that they cannot distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert"? If that's how you feel about the average person, why do you still favor democracy?

minikites 8y ago
People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" (again, not related to their intelligence, this is a developed skill). https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html >We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.
- luckylion 8y ago
  > People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. Citation needed. Obviously, people from the humanities believe that they are very important and should be paid a lot to shepherd society, but that's not enough to convince me. Edit: Sorry, due to serial flagging thanks to this I can't reply. I don't care enough about this to retry later and get flagged again. Emotions apparently run too high if it concerns worldviews.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - minikites 8y ago
    Given your hostile opening, I'll start by asking what you think that evidence would look like and what you would find convincing.
  - pas 8y ago
    I don't consider myself from "the humanities", but the lack of applied rationality skills in the general population is dangerously severe. (Look at how populism spread by convincing people via the cheapest of rhetorical appeals to ego and arrogance.)
- themacguffinman 8y ago
  So not dumb-dumb, but dumb for all intents and purposes of making decisions in a democracy? What's the difference? At the core of your argument is the idea that people in a democracy aren't able to do their singular duty: make a reasonable choice based on available information, so they need to be coddled and only fed information that is "fair", "fair" as determined by liberal arts majors I guess. And if anti semitic arguments are so unfairly effective, why hasn't it won? All the major platforms have a lot of anti semitic speech that they haven't been able to filter out, and it's remarkably easy to find on the internet, so why hasn't it entranced the majority of non-liberal-arts majors? Why are the masses of average people calling for the removal of anti semitic content - an act built on a rejection of anti semitic ideas - instead of being enthralled by it?