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I don't think intellectual humility tells the whole story. I have a few opinions where my primary reason for supporting tolerance of the opposing viewpoint has

by jawns 6y ago

I don't think intellectual humility tells the whole story. I have a few opinions where my primary reason for supporting tolerance of the opposing viewpoint has nothing to do with "maybe I'm wrong." (I mean, sure, maybe I am, but that's not why I support my opponent's right to free speech.) Tolerance always means that you put up with something you think is wrong because there is something greater at stake: harmoniousness, libertarianism, etc. I would wager (though maybe I'm wrong) that people of higher intelligence have the ability to practice higher level-k thinking: "If I support the government having the power to suppress X, with which I disagree, then at some later time the government might use that same power to suppress Y, with which I agree, and that would be worse than tolerating X." Being able to anticipate potential consequences, especially those that aren't immediate or require a few hops to get to, does seem like a skill that is associated with general cognitive ability. I see this a lot in the way that people respond to Supreme Court rulings. The court interprets the law in a certain way, and it leads to a ruling that supports a favored ideological outcome, and so people cheer the decision, not necessarily taking into account that the reasoning the court used to arrive at their decision might be applied to later cases where it does not lead to the ideological outcome they want.

DanielBMarkham 6y ago
I completely agree with what you're saying. I find that one of my greatest frustrations with attacks on utilitarianism is how, well dumb they make the attacks. "Would you kill one person in a scientific experiment to save a dozen?" No, because any world in which such a trade was acceptable is not a just or fair world that I would want to live in. You have to reason at multiple levels. I usually make online comments for two reasons. One, to see if there's some neutral way of explaining things that might slightly advance understanding of my views without being offensive, perhaps start a friendly conversation. Two, to try to put these higher-level ideas into simpler and simpler terms in an effort to find out if there's some common-language leverage point to be found. The first goal has to avoid any kind of trigger phrase people are programming themselves to emotionally respond to. That's getting more and more difficult. More and more people just don't want to hear anything that's from a suspect source. People are treating online discourse as a game: identify friend-or-foe, engage (or support). The second goal is more fun, but I run the risk of oversimplifying. Apologies.
- fapjacks 6y ago
  > No, because any world in which such a trade was acceptable is not a just or fair world that I would want to live in. You have to reason at multiple levels. But in the same way that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you, the universe is also under no obligation to be just or fair to you; it simply exists. One of the primary issues here is that all meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective. People are not fungible. You would certainly save twelve of your closest friends and family if it meant the death of a complete stranger, but we could guess that the complete stranger's husband would pick his wife over what appears to him to be twelve random names on a list. If that man gets to make the choice, and he makes it, it was a fair and equitable choice for him, but unfair and unjust to you. That is the nature of our universe, whether we accept it or not. Imbalance exists because all meaning is subjective. This consequence holds even if the subjectivity is only marginally variable. And because meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective, life itself has no inherent value, except for the meaning and value we each assign to it. Whatever our differences in opinion, this is indisputably the case. The inherent objective value of any given life is precisely zero United States dollars (and the same is true of those dollars). This is a really really big hurdle, and I'd venture an estimation that most people in fact go all the way to their grave believing the opposite, or at least believing that the opposite "should be" true (hint: words like "should be" are the language of value judgments and therefore in the realm of the subjective). It is at its core primarily an issue of control, and illusions of control, and the complications arising from this. Control -- real control -- does not extend beyond the boundary of your mind. Most people go through life without truly grokking what control means, what it looks like, where it exists, and where it does not exist. It follows then that because of this ignorance, most people do not have control of their own minds. And being only human, we project so much of ourselves and our thoughts onto our perceptions of the universe, that we can fool ourselves easily with illusions of control. I think this is where most criticism of free speech is rooted: Most people are unable to control their own minds, their own thoughts, because they don't understand the nature of control, and therefore they are subjected to literal mind control by the external forces creating the storm of words, ideas, internet memes, gossip, propaganda, tweets, comments, et cetera, coming in from all directions. And so it's a simple matter of imagining that everyone else is also powerless against this torrent, such that people need to be protected from "dangerous" ideas and speech.
ghaff 6y ago
And you don't need to look any further than yesterday's ruling. It's a desirable outcome IMO. However, you can be sure the public reaction would be a lot different if the same "the justification for repeal was insufficient" were to be applied to a President Biden trying to repeal some Donald Trump executive order.

by jawns 6y ago

DanielBMarkham 6y ago

I completely agree with what you're saying. I find that one of my greatest frustrations with attacks on utilitarianism is how, well dumb they make the attacks. "Would you kill one person in a scientific experiment to save a dozen?" No, because any world in which such a trade was acceptable is not a just or fair world that I would want to live in. You have to reason at multiple levels. I usually make online comments for two reasons. One, to see if there's some neutral way of explaining things that might slightly advance understanding of my views without being offensive, perhaps start a friendly conversation. Two, to try to put these higher-level ideas into simpler and simpler terms in an effort to find out if there's some common-language leverage point to be found. The first goal has to avoid any kind of trigger phrase people are programming themselves to emotionally respond to. That's getting more and more difficult. More and more people just don't want to hear anything that's from a suspect source. People are treating online discourse as a game: identify friend-or-foe, engage (or support). The second goal is more fun, but I run the risk of oversimplifying. Apologies.

fapjacks 6y ago
> No, because any world in which such a trade was acceptable is not a just or fair world that I would want to live in. You have to reason at multiple levels. But in the same way that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you, the universe is also under no obligation to be just or fair to you; it simply exists. One of the primary issues here is that all meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective. People are not fungible. You would certainly save twelve of your closest friends and family if it meant the death of a complete stranger, but we could guess that the complete stranger's husband would pick his wife over what appears to him to be twelve random names on a list. If that man gets to make the choice, and he makes it, it was a fair and equitable choice for him, but unfair and unjust to you. That is the nature of our universe, whether we accept it or not. Imbalance exists because all meaning is subjective. This consequence holds even if the subjectivity is only marginally variable. And because meaning is subjective, and therefore all value judgments are subjective, life itself has no inherent value, except for the meaning and value we each assign to it. Whatever our differences in opinion, this is indisputably the case. The inherent objective value of any given life is precisely zero United States dollars (and the same is true of those dollars). This is a really really big hurdle, and I'd venture an estimation that most people in fact go all the way to their grave believing the opposite, or at least believing that the opposite "should be" true (hint: words like "should be" are the language of value judgments and therefore in the realm of the subjective). It is at its core primarily an issue of control, and illusions of control, and the complications arising from this. Control -- real control -- does not extend beyond the boundary of your mind. Most people go through life without truly grokking what control means, what it looks like, where it exists, and where it does not exist. It follows then that because of this ignorance, most people do not have control of their own minds. And being only human, we project so much of ourselves and our thoughts onto our perceptions of the universe, that we can fool ourselves easily with illusions of control. I think this is where most criticism of free speech is rooted: Most people are unable to control their own minds, their own thoughts, because they don't understand the nature of control, and therefore they are subjected to literal mind control by the external forces creating the storm of words, ideas, internet memes, gossip, propaganda, tweets, comments, et cetera, coming in from all directions. And so it's a simple matter of imagining that everyone else is also powerless against this torrent, such that people need to be protected from "dangerous" ideas and speech.

ghaff 6y ago

And you don't need to look any further than yesterday's ruling. It's a desirable outcome IMO. However, you can be sure the public reaction would be a lot different if the same "the justification for repeal was insufficient" were to be applied to a President Biden trying to repeal some Donald Trump executive order.