Discussion: The Ego and Group Identity vs Criticism

🍁 Aria 🔮 · May 20, 2020, 07:18:18 PM

Quote from: SecondClass on May 20, 2020, 02:22:56 PM

Oh so this is the kind of discussions you guys want

I thought we were a chill forum of friends not a high school debate team

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Calling anything in this thread a "debate" is a pretty big stretch. Do you mean that it's boring you?

🍁 Aria 🔮 · May 20, 2020, 07:27:00 PM

Quote from: Solonoid on May 20, 2020, 03:26:03 AM

I recently had an argument with someone who believed that monopolies based on market dominance were completely justified, and that companies should be able to extract any price from dependent consumers they please because, in his opinion, the market is always just. In his opinion, if you make a product that is superior to all other similar products to the point you squeeze competition out of existence, even if that product is something people, or society as a whole depends on, you should be able to charge much more than a reasonable profit margin, and he did not see that as taking advantage of consumers. It's not that I'm unable to understand his viewpoint, I'm just completely unable to understand how he could justify something like that. Should I even consider his argument when my fundamental values are so misaligned from his that where he sees acceptable business practices I see blatant abuse? Honestly, I don't think it would even be possible for me to seriously do so; what we believe is just too different on a very basic level.

You hold value in life and that person doesn't. I cannot believe the lack of empathy some people have.

MarKhan · May 21, 2020, 04:13:15 PM

Quote from: 🍁 Aria 🔮 on May 20, 2020, 07:10:16 PM

Quote from: MarKhan on May 20, 2020, 10:00:31 AM
It's a quote from second KOTOR by Kreia. To believe into something is to show your confidence in it, in that it will be successful or, in current context, that it will withstand critique. You can't have full confidence in something that you haven't thoroughly checked, and so you have to check everything. But in checking you automatically admit to possibility that the thing in check is flawed and that you betray it for something better.
That certainly sounds like Kreia! What of axioms? As knowledge that is self-evidently true, there is no need to question it. From there, it seems there are two types of knowledge: certain and uncertain knowledge. How would you identify the differences between the two?

Well, I would place all knowledge into uncertain as a starting point, then I would validate it by communicating it with others, directly (for example by asking questions) or not (by reading books, papers, internet), by thinking about it and by putting it into practice (like setting up prototypes, experiments and doing bunch of tests then putting it in use into real world to see how it performs). And even if I would do all of that and it passed all those checks, I would often come up only with sufficent knowledge that I would evaluate as enough to rely on it, but would it be certain? No. It would get closer to certain each time I try to validate it, but there is so much to consider. Context in which knowledge manifests. Changes that time brings. My own memory and that I can make mistakes in knowledge itself, in how I test it, how I define it and so on.

Axioms aren't a certain knowledge, they are a piece of data. The difference between knowledge and data is that knowledge is not just says what the thing is, but also it's application. So for example a*b = b*a is true in algebra, but if I tried to apply multiplication to matrixes, A*B might not equal B*A.

FatherlyNick - fuck putin · May 22, 2020, 01:21:15 PM

The issue here is that criticism can be subjective and a person with even slightly malleable mindset can often simply agree-to-disagree because opinions can be different.

It would be much more productive to focus on turning people away from objectively bad things that we can factual backed up. I wrote a piece on this last year.

It is a rough draft so uh, sorry bad English.

Changing minds. Should we try to dispose of outdated / harmful views or opinions held by others? If yes, how do we go about this ethically? Part 1.

I suppose we should begin by discussing how an opinion or view is deemed outdated or harmful.
Here I propose that any opinion or view that can be proven to be wrong by undeniable facts (mostly scientific) – is an outdated one. This would be quite simple to do. Identifying a harmful view however, is much harder.
If we judge a view or opinion by its moral and ethical merits and arrive at the fact that its motives are ill – we deem it to be harmful. Obviously, there are a lot of uncertainties with this method compared to hard facts used with outdated views. Since it depends on undefined morals and ethics which can vary (wildly or slightly) from person to person. I will not delve into defining these and simply ask the reader to think of the basic ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ that you use as a compass when navigating your social intuition through the streets of life.
We may now address the first question. Should we even try to change someone’s mind? Similar to how evolution changes an organism to better suit their environment, an idea should also suit the person’s world. At least that’s how I see it. Just like evolution – mutation of a person’s mind or at a larger scale – the mind of society is a very slow process. We slowly moved from belief in multiple gods being responsible for Earthly phenomenon like rain or erupting volcanoes to accepting a single god figure. We stopped believing in a flat Earth or witchcraft. We moved from accepting slavery as a normal form of labor replacing it with a semi-forced labor (but that’s a story for another day).
These changes took a lot of time before they were accepting. We can agree that overall these changes lead to a better world / life. So it would seem that changing mind is good, right? Well, once a single god became the norm. Humans (very imaginative creatures) spun all sorts of legends and myths and this split humanity based on what legend or myth they believed in. There were wars and forced conversions. The Church having direct control over states – having power to label anyone ‘wicked’ or a ‘heretic’ for not conforming to what they deemed as ‘normal’ and promptly executing them for their supposed crimes against god and church. Just like Galileo who proposed that Earth was not flat and the sun is in place while it’s the Earth that in fact rotates around it was labeled a heretic by the Church. It took more time before such practices would become obsolete and cease to exist in most parts of the world.

Second question is – how should we change minds? An individual forms opinions and views using their own outlook on the world and life. Hence they would believe to be correct because they spent time arriving at their opinion using all of their personal mental tools such as logic, morality and ethics. An individual would never hold onto a view they themselves know to be wrong. I am not saying that people can never contradict themselves (I think we all contradict ourselves daily in some way), but that if they receive trust-worthy information that challenges their views – they will begin the process of deduction again and gradually arrive at an updated view. This happens naturally at their own pace and so will be believed to be correct by said individual.
I would like to highlight a psychological phenomenon whereby people tend to value things more when they discovered them on their own rather than finding out about it from someone else. You are more likely to enjoy a musical artist if a friend simply mentions their name followed by a short and general description of what they are like and what possible tracks you should try out than if the same friend played the suggested tracks to you.
You can see that in the first case, you are guided towards a new idea while in the latter you are flat out told what you should like. I don’t know the mechanism behind this but I suspect this is due a person’s critical thinking with a combination of skepticism and a pinch of pride. Your mind probably thinks “Why do you assume that I will like this?” or “Why do you assume I will like what you like?”

This then would lead us to think that the sure way to change people’s mind is exposure to alternative thoughts or at least a different perspective. If we follow this approach however, the person who we are trying to convince could just dismiss your guidance as an opinion and agree to disagree. Not quite productive as it doesn’t achieve our desired goal of changing minds.
So here is the very thin line between opinion sharing and changing minds.

The issues –
Finding the ‘correct’ view to ensure that the change that we are trying to achieve is virtuous. Positive change is a good change;
The goal of the mind change should be an overall improvement of life within societies. But this is too global sometimes. Teaching a person to cut down sugar consumption will not make the world a better place but can lead to an improved quality of life to the person we are giving advice to.
Is trying to convert a believer into atheism a positive change? Rational view, but is it virtuous – improving anything in the world?

Being too soft and not confrontational enough;
Being too confrontational;
Mind blowing things – radical change can take a while to be accepted as the world view;

Deep rooted outlooks set by culture and years of traditions / faith.