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That people are fundamentally benevolent to one another. Obviously it can be trained out of you by circumstance, overcome by self-interest, and mental illness is a thing, but I think people innately care for one another. It's why dehumanization is the first step to committing atrocities.
But if someone offered proof that I'm wrong that might be the least surprising thing that happened all week. And if I'm wrong, the evil-doers are sub-human and should be culled without mercy until I am right.
The evil-doers are sub-human and should be culled without mercy until I'm right.
I know what you mean but that sentence is really funny when 1.5 sentences earlier you said "it's why dehumanization is the first step to commiting atrocities" haha
It's the intolerance paradox in action. It's like tolerating cancer. Cancer is a living thing, it doesn't mean you respect it and let it have its way with you without interference. Same principle.
The intolerance paradox is an explanation of fascism, not a rebuttal.
It demonstrates the motivation: destroy those who pose a danger to our way of life. It allows us a justification to do to others exactly what we accuse them of doing to us.
We're coming for the Nazis today, and nobody is stopping us. Who are we going after tomorrow?
Hard disagree. You've oversimplified. We ONLY need to do to the Nazis what they want to do to everyone else, because we have no other choice except to to let them win and then die. Their actions dictate their demise, not ours.
If they left everyone alone, they'd be left alone. Since they want to kill most of the planet, and will given the opportunity, they must be killed.
because we have no other choice except to to let them win and then die.
No, that's untrue. We do, indeed, have a choice.
For the nazis to thrive, society has to value the ability to eradicate others. We have to accept the idea that we may very well be the ones in the wrong. Probably not today, but quite possibly tomorrow. The Nazi does not value such introspection. They cannot consider a world in which they could ever be the bad guys. Our willingness to annihilate a perceived threat must always be tempered with the humility that we are not an omniscient, objective source of truth. We can, indeed, be the baddies.
The delineation always needs to be at the point of eradicating "others". That always needs to be a trait of "them" and never of "us". Our mindset must always be "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
That statement is addressed to a hateful speaker, but that speaker is not the intended audience. The intended audience is the one who would try to stop someone from speaking. The message is "We collectively defend even the people we hate."
We have to accept the idea that we may very well be the ones in the wrong.
I will never accept that to let everyone live in peace no matter what they look like or who they consensually sleep with, is wrong. And therefore the rest of your argument falls apart for me. Nazism is a hateful, violent belief system and not something you are born with, and for those reasons is unworthy of protection of any kind.
I see where you're coming from. I just don't agree with it. Hatred must be stamped out, and that can't always be done peacefully. I am ok with this paradox, hypocrisy, whatever you want to call it.
Hatred must be stamped out,
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend - to the death - your right to say it. The same goes for anyone you would silence or eradicate.
You can't out-auth a fascist without becoming a fascist yourself, and I don't want to live in a fascist state.
Well, I don't believe you.
Would you defend the right of someone to stand across the street from an elementary school with a megaphone, every day (for years) while the kids get on and off the bus, yelling in great detail how much he enjoys watching them and how he dreams about them every night? Not quite crossing the line into vulgarity that would get him arrested, but definitely causing stress and great anxiety to everyone around him, and harming the mental health of small children at the least?
If you don't defend that speech, then you do have a line. You just draw it in a different place than I do.
It was intentional irony.
That we can build a sane, rational society.
One could argue by historical standards that we're closer than not already. How sane would you say sane is?
I thought that Western style Democratic republics were leading the world toward purely secular forms of government, but yet another group of sociopaths has managed to take power. They have distracted the science-illiterate majority into petty conflicts based on different versions of magical thinking.
So, "sane" would mean that we don't elevate the least sane among us (sociopaths) into positions of power. "Rational" would mean that public policy decisions are mostly made based on evidence, rather than fundamentally irrational belief systems.
I fear that we are barely-sentient primates doomed to repeat the same awful mistakes, when simple, obvious solutions are within our grasp.
Yes, that's fair. I worry about similar things - we had 5000 years of all dictatorships in the historical record, with randomly varying types and levels of intolerance and brutality, and then real progress for 200. How do we know it's here to stay?
I haven't given up hope yet, because we're so far ahead of where we were. Even with the US down the forces of enlightenment lead the world. There's also the question of how much longer humans are going to be solely in charge, anyway. Do we really expect no AGI for another 100 years, or that we wouldn't use it to make the big decisions as well?
That people's 'default' morality is 'good'.
It isn't. It is actually pure apathy and only do we get taught, groomed, learn, decide, etc. about morality.
If that is true, then some people are actually 'better' and 'worse' than others. If so, then my entire outlook on human life will need to change. Don't know to what, but that is the existential threat.
Recently had to come to the conclusion, that even though I have never 'tried' to learn, observe, or otherwise be smart, that I am well above average intelligence to those immediately around me. This is beyond infuriating. How can I be 'better' than everyone on average without even trying? It infuriates me to no end.
That people can change through conversations. It’s tough to accept, but most people only change when forced to.
I've noticed 2 types on this, stick-in-the-muds and peak-hunters.
Stick in the muds latch on to the first version of a belief they encounter properly. They will stubbornly hang on to that for as long as possible.
Peak hunters are the opposite, they will rapidly change beliefs to maximise the results/find truth.
Interestingly, after some time, the 2 groups look almost identical. The peak hunters tend to find the 'best' version of their belief, based on their existing memeplex. To budge them, you need to show a different belief is better, on their rankings (not yours). This is hard when they have already maximised it. Without knowing how they are weighing things, they can look like stick in the muds.
The biggest tell is to question why they believe what they do. If they have a reasonably comprehensive answer, they are likely peak hunters. Stick in the muds generally can't articulate why their belief is better, outside of common sound bites.
I understood this and think it’s accurate.
What do you think the ratio is there? And how much does it vary culture to culture?
People or beliefs?
I've changed my mind many times based on online discussions.
Beliefs. I’ve changed my mind too, but it seems to be the exception.
That people are not wilfully stupid. The last 10 years have proved people will act against their own benefit if TV tells them to do it.
That climate change won’t wipe out humanity. I firmly believe we’ll survive, but it will be a massively devastating event, like 1/3 of the population will die. I think the equator will probably become uninhabitable, but more northern or southern land will become more like the equator. Maybe I’m wrong though, and we won’t survive. Maybe there’s a reason we don’t see any advanced space faring civilizations.
I can't think of any that I'd be particularly surprised by at this point.
Probably the belief that there (isn't) some kind of omnipotent god interested in guiding our affairs. It's not like I'd ever be able to know. How would I cope? Pretty easily. It'd be comforting. That's a pretty good reason to doubt it, since I'm biased in favor of it.
The thing is, I'm not picking this one because it's the most likely one, but because all of the other "core" beliefs are either completely subjective judgments that can't be "wrong" or are flexible enough that it doesn't really matter.
And omnibenevolent? A god that's just screwing with us is feeling relatively more likely these days, and I'm not comforted.
that part is tautological. if the almighty is perfection, then benevolence is defined by it, not by us. so the only way one can consistently hold that belief is to admit that we are the imperfection. we are the disease, we are punished. i guess that's why i dont believe that shit lol
The cream does, in fact, rise to the top. All the rich idiots I've met were brilliant in a subtle way I couldn't appreciate, and I myself am just being lead on by the people I know about having redeeming qualities of any kind. All the studies showing social mobility is small both upwards and downwards had some kind of fatal flaw built into their assumptions.
Stuff about moral decline is another candidate. In both cases, I'm actually pretty sure everyone in every time, place and walk of life has roughly the same capacities on average, but narratives suggesting otherwise are so damn pervasive I have to wonder if I'm missing something.
That there's no such thing as too much inclusivity in LGBTQ.
I don't think people who want to pretend to be dogs or cars or whatever inanimate object they fixated on as a child are harmful to society, but they have proven to only delegitamize actually real gender identities that are being actively erased in the real world.
I don't care if people want to wear collars and shit in litter boxes because that makes their brains happy, but I do care when those people show up in public places wanting to be treated with the same seriousness as actually marginalized minorities and get LGBTQ movements laughed out of the room.
I tend to agree with you, but this same line of thought is used by many in the queer community to 'other' bisexuals and trans people, for example. Everyone draws the line in a slightly different place. I don't know what the right answer is. For me I would probably draw the line between 'sexuality' and 'fetish'. Your sexuality should be protected from discrimination and persecution, but in my mind a fetish is more akin to a hobby or sport you enjoy and wouldn't deserve the same level of protections or attention.
You can easily choose not to walk around in a dog collar on a leash in a rubber suit in public, because you're just doing it for kicks. You can't choose not to be queer.
"Bullshit. There's no way the moon is actually made of cheese. That's just a stupid story you tell kids!"
That all living things are worthy of my compassion. If the millions of conservatives out there somehow prove me wrong... then all attempts at civilization are doomed to collapse and we're reverting back to feudal times.
The way I landed on all my current beliefs was taking in information from as many places as I could and I decided on what I think is right.
There are a ton of topics that can't have an objectively correct answer which makes things fairly complicated.
I don't think it could be anything I expect. Most of the things I have consciously evaluated about myself I've come to a conclusion based on rational or empirical evidence, so I am certain either in my knowledge or ignorance about a topic. Most of the time when I've been proven wrong it's about a belief I imbibed as a child and never questioned or considered until then.
Would be interested in a list of past facts that turned out to be wrong.
Government of the people, for the people, by the people.
I'm actually good at what I do, and everyone actually likes me and doesn't think I'm just dead weight.
My deepest core belief is that there is a non-zero likelihood (which may be quite high) that everything I think I know about the world is wrong.
If it was proven to me beyond a doubt that something I know is undoubtedly correct, I would probably think that there was a possibility that the proof was wrong and go on with my day.
The world is a simulation. Everyone you see is just an AI construct. WAKE UP
~/s~
That I live in a constitutional democratic republic