4 ms·

I don’t really know what you’re talking about I guess. I don’t know if man is rational. But I do know for the history of man we have had (and still do) societie

I don’t really know what you’re talking about I guess. I don’t know if man is rational. But I do know for the history of man we have had (and still do) societies of knowledge-authority that have ultimately cumulated in fundamentalist authoritarians. This ends up in violence. You have an opinion to be sure but why on Earth should I believe it as truth? What evidence do you have and what are you leaving out? Why is your observation so important as to restrict what others should see, hear, say, etc? Be rigorous. What gives you the right to limit this? You can express your opinion but why do you think you know what’s best for everyone? I can only trust you know what is best for you. You are but a single voice - as much as anyone else. Which lies and half truths do you acknowledge and which ones do you ignore or are oblivious to? Which ones are you victim to? You can’t possibly know. But it’s a rather big ask for me, more so the rest of people, to just take your word for it. No one is the authority or has the final say. If your ideas are right then prove it or persuade people of it. It’s the only way. The other ways involve oppression and possibly violence. What if people decide that you’re just not viable anymore because of your ideas and just sort of publicly execute you as a warning? What happens when the classical liberal epistemology is thrown away because it is inconvenient? Are you SURE your side will be in control?

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
I'm not proposing any idea other than acting as if people are rational and not subject to manipulation is demonstrably madness. I'm not arguing any course of action, merely pointing out that a course of action based on the idea that people are rational will not work, because they demonstrably are not.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  I agree - people are probably not always rational and people are indeed subject to manipulation. But it changes nothing. If anything it’s BECAUSE of this that we need to agree all ideas are fallible and subject to debate and that no one owns the truth. An appeal to a fundamental authority cant work precisely because we are not rational and are subject to manipulation. We just don’t know. We have a right to opinion, beliefs, and debate but not much more. No one is above this. No one is an oracle. The thought that came from The Enlightenment to philosophers like Karl Popper to modern authors like Johnathan Rausch explain this better than I can here. I’d read “Kindly Inquisitors” if you have a bit of time (pretty short overall) to get a better understanding of these ideas. We have a series of liberal democracies in the West for a reason and it isn’t a fluke. Countless wars, inquisitions, and pointless suffering led to it. We are still struggling to fulfill the potential today and have to constantly fight off regressive philosophy but that’s the price.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    The most impactful "ideas" in the current (social) media climate do not subscribe to any of your idea(l)s. Pizzagate/QAnon, as examples, are not "subject to debate". They are "oracular" in nature (there is a single source of "truth" ) and followers are expect to ... follow. You can try to apply a Popperian approach to "controversial" or "conspiratorial" ideas, but the end result is that essentially always, such ideas fail to pass any credibility threshold. But then people show in comment threads online, insisting that "not listening" to such ideas is inimical to the basics of free speech, and that nobody owns the truth. These kinds of ideas have created a scenario in which nobody benefits, and in which truth, or more accurately perhaps, the pursuit of truth, suffers.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      I don’t think you have to listen to them. More so, you have every right to ruthlessly mock those ideas and the people that propagate them if that’s how you want to counter it. There’s a billion chain-letter bad ideas and rumors floating around. Who chooses which ones must be stopped and which ones ignored? The internet poses a problem in that yea, bad ideas flow faster. But I’d argue so do good ones. I think we need to take the lumps and learn the lessons and be better for it down the road.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

I'm not proposing any idea other than acting as if people are rational and not subject to manipulation is demonstrably madness. I'm not arguing any course of action, merely pointing out that a course of action based on the idea that people are rational will not work, because they demonstrably are not.

nemo44x 6y ago
I agree - people are probably not always rational and people are indeed subject to manipulation. But it changes nothing. If anything it’s BECAUSE of this that we need to agree all ideas are fallible and subject to debate and that no one owns the truth. An appeal to a fundamental authority cant work precisely because we are not rational and are subject to manipulation. We just don’t know. We have a right to opinion, beliefs, and debate but not much more. No one is above this. No one is an oracle. The thought that came from The Enlightenment to philosophers like Karl Popper to modern authors like Johnathan Rausch explain this better than I can here. I’d read “Kindly Inquisitors” if you have a bit of time (pretty short overall) to get a better understanding of these ideas. We have a series of liberal democracies in the West for a reason and it isn’t a fluke. Countless wars, inquisitions, and pointless suffering led to it. We are still struggling to fulfill the potential today and have to constantly fight off regressive philosophy but that’s the price.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  The most impactful "ideas" in the current (social) media climate do not subscribe to any of your idea(l)s. Pizzagate/QAnon, as examples, are not "subject to debate". They are "oracular" in nature (there is a single source of "truth" ) and followers are expect to ... follow. You can try to apply a Popperian approach to "controversial" or "conspiratorial" ideas, but the end result is that essentially always, such ideas fail to pass any credibility threshold. But then people show in comment threads online, insisting that "not listening" to such ideas is inimical to the basics of free speech, and that nobody owns the truth. These kinds of ideas have created a scenario in which nobody benefits, and in which truth, or more accurately perhaps, the pursuit of truth, suffers.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    I don’t think you have to listen to them. More so, you have every right to ruthlessly mock those ideas and the people that propagate them if that’s how you want to counter it. There’s a billion chain-letter bad ideas and rumors floating around. Who chooses which ones must be stopped and which ones ignored? The internet poses a problem in that yea, bad ideas flow faster. But I’d argue so do good ones. I think we need to take the lumps and learn the lessons and be better for it down the road.