4 ms·
You haven't considered the most important part of this: is stigma good at changing behaviours? If you stigmatise something and shame people for it, you tend to
by brutusborn 5y ago
You haven't considered the most important part of this: is stigma good at changing behaviours?
If you stigmatise something and shame people for it, you tend to push people underground. At that point rational discourse can't exist because there are social pressures to not reveal the unpopular opinion, and thus discussion doesn't occur.
It's foolish to think that people have stopped dying from stupidity, it happens every day in every country on earth. And it's foolish to think you can cure "the sin" of stupidity by using shame. This doesn't mean we ignore people's bad decisions, but that we must be realistic about the utility of our response.
- caslon 5y agoStigma is absolutely good at changing behaviors. I listed an obvious one here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29297156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29297156 You can absolutely cure stupidity with shame. The renaissance of science and industry during the period from 1914-1980 can largely be attributed to the wars producing propaganda painting being unintelligent undesirable. Regrettably though not unfortunately, people have by and large stopped dying from stupidity. We have made the world very safe and it is much harder to get yourself killed because of stupidity. There are a handful of ways to nowadays, but they're mostly over the course of such a long period of time that there's no selection pressure from them. The recent pandemic has been a help, but it's unlikely to kill as much as seriously maim younger people who refuse to vaccinate themselves, so it's mostly people dying due to the stupidity of others.
- brutusborn 5y agoI'm open to evidence on the efficacy of shame, but your other comment does not provide that.