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The Righteousness Fix

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Re: The Righteousness Fix

#141

Post by zzzeek »

thinkingemote wrote: post #61
zzzeek wrote: post #32

I would question the author's casual belief that a so-called "righteous" attitude , where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group. This is a huge leap and I personally don't believe there is any such necessity: > Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, li…

Thats sympathy. Empathy is different from sympathy. I can be sympathetic without really empathising with someone, and I can have empathy with someone without being sympathetic. Empathy uses more energy. Ingroups tend to avoid empathy with outgroups because that weakens the separateness between people, and ingroups try to strengthen ingroup sympathy. Pity is a form of sympathy. Sympathy: "I feel bad for you" Empathy:…

should have been more specific. I am not a stranger to cult indoctrination. Plus I grew up with these people in the same house. So I actually know where she is coming from and to some extent what it's like to be indoctrinated (I had a bried stint with scientology 30 years ago). It's fully possible to be empathetic for someone's worldview and still know that they are completely wrong. I'm not sure how that's not feasible.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#142

Post by ifyoubuildit »

dragonwriter wrote: post #58
narag wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham's essay What You Can't Say contains a great piece of advice: One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction. If you argue against censorship in general, you can avoid being accused of whatever heresy is contained in the book or film that someone is trying to censor. You can attack labels with meta-labels: labels that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. The downside i…

> Downside is sometimes people doesn't understand what you meant. But the explicit purpose is to conceal what you actually mean to avoid criticism. So, you need to be more specific about “people”: one downside is that the intended audience sometimes doesn't understand what you mean (another is that the audience you are trying to bypass sometimes does.) PG is referring to the long-recognized practice of political dog-…

That's one interpretation, but I don't think a particularly charitable one.

My own read on that would be this: the explicit purpose is to discuss something that has emotional/tribal baggage associated with it (which makes it hard for people to think rationally) by distilling out the actual meat of the issue without the baggage.

I think its important to be critical of things, but I see a tendency for people to constantly be looking for the enemy in conversations online. Everyone has their weapons raised. Everything has to be labeled and sorted into it's own little box (the terms "disingenuous" and "bad faith" seem to have exploded in use for example). That's what I see in your reference to dog whistles. Do you think pg is advocating dog whistling?

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#143

Post by dang »

cwoolfe wrote: post #115

This is the natural consequence of killing God, as Nietzsche observed. Without an objective basis, there's no objective truth about what's valuable, right, or good. But we desperately want to be right, so we ignore what God says is right and invent our own version. "For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness." - The apostle Paul's le…

Please don't take HN threads into generic religious arguments. They lead to religious flamewars, which are particularly bad threads for HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#144

Post by jonnycomputer »

welshwelsh wrote: post #119
cwoolfe wrote: post #115

This is the natural consequence of killing God, as Nietzsche observed. Without an objective basis, there's no objective truth about what's valuable, right, or good. But we desperately want to be right, so we ignore what God says is right and invent our own version. "For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness." - The apostle Paul's le…

But was there ever an objective basis? No two believers could ever agree on what God wants, even back when Jesus was alive. Because God is nothing but an invention of man, what God thinks is merely a reflection of what each individual person thinks. Even if you go off a text like the Bible, there is no objective interpretation of what it means. >has zero pride, was so humble Jesus literally claimed to be the son of G…

>Jesus literally claimed to be the son of God. That's about as arrogant as you can get.

If it were in fact true, then it would only be stating a fact, one that the people listening might need to know.

I'm not religious, but I think that your comment fails the test of charitability.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#145

Post by jimbokun »

csours wrote: post #67

Social Media rewards polarized, highly motivated points of view. This isn't a "both sides" thing, it's a human nature thing. These highly polarized posts never change anyone's minds. They only make people more motivated. It can be good to be more motivated, but the cost is driving a wedge between people who are differently motivated. So how can tech solve this? I have no idea, but people can help by having conversati…

I think it has to be a change to the culture.

Many of us have been shocked at the sudden rejection of Classical Liberalism. Preference for free exchange of ideas, objectivity, debate, judging arguments without regard to who is making the argument.

I think those of us who were engaged in that intellectual world, never realized that most people are not invested in these values. So now that everyone has the capability to broadcast their ideas to the entire world, and consume ideas from anywhere in the world, the marketplace of ideas reflect the tribalism that was already there, but not as evident because "The Elite" controlled the discourse in the past.

Trump of course understood all of this intuitively. He almost exclusively debates people, not ideas, and many people responded positively and enthusiastically to that style of discourse.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#146

Post by hammock »

prionassembly wrote: post #134
calebm wrote: post #132

There's an interesting bible verse that I've never heard quoted in churches: "BE NOT OVERLY RIGHTEOUS, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them." (Ecclesiastes 7:16-18).

Kipling has this If you can wait and not be tired by waiting Or being lied about, don't deal in lies Or being hated, don't give way to hating And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.

No post body was provided.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#147

Post by narag »

dragonwriter wrote: post #58
narag wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham's essay What You Can't Say contains a great piece of advice: One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction. If you argue against censorship in general, you can avoid being accused of whatever heresy is contained in the book or film that someone is trying to censor. You can attack labels with meta-labels: labels that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. The downside i…

> Downside is sometimes people doesn't understand what you meant. But the explicit purpose is to conceal what you actually mean to avoid criticism. So, you need to be more specific about “people”: one downside is that the intended audience sometimes doesn't understand what you mean (another is that the audience you are trying to bypass sometimes does.) PG is referring to the long-recognized practice of political dog-…

But the explicit purpose is to conceal what you actually mean to avoid criticism.

Criticism is OK, lynching is not. Attacking the censorship makes obvious that there is a problem with free speech. If you just defend the specific topic, you get sucked into the mess.

Saying that righteousness is an addiction is actually more efficient than attacking one of the addicts' many self-righteous causes. Have you tried to reason with an addict about their use?

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#148

Post by BeetleB »

323 wrote: post #114
zzzeek wrote: post #32

I would question the author's casual belief that a so-called "righteous" attitude , where one has decided that they have more wisdom on a particular topic than some other particular group of people, necessarily means they therefore lose all their empathy for that group. This is a huge leap and I personally don't believe there is any such necessity: > Viewing ourselves as “good,” in fact we become grievously toxic, li…

> her mind being fully indoctrinated by FOX news As opposed to her mind being liberated and enlightened if she would watch CNN instead.

The news world doesn't exist merely between these two choices.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#149

Post by BeetleB »

ameminator wrote: post #112
jiggyjace wrote: post #63

I wonder what the author's thoughts are on "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt. It mentions many clear refutes backed up by history to the idea of how bad it is for humans to be "addicted to righteousness". For example, individuals have not and do not live by themselves in a vacuum as only selfish. We are also very group-ish, and it is the righteousness or norm…

Do you think we felt righteous when we invaded Iraq on a lie? Do you think that the Hutus felt righteous when they killed Tutsis in Rwanda in the 90s? Do you think that people felt righteous when they committed heinous torture on people, for petty crimes, in the medieval era? Do you think the vaccinated feel righteous when they condemn the unvaccinated?

This comment is just noise and doesn't really address anything the parent comment put forth.

Anyone can ask questions.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#150

Post by BeetleB »

jiggyjace wrote: post #63

I wonder what the author's thoughts are on "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt. It mentions many clear refutes backed up by history to the idea of how bad it is for humans to be "addicted to righteousness". For example, individuals have not and do not live by themselves in a vacuum as only selfish. We are also very group-ish, and it is the righteousness or norm…

Not only that, but he pointed out research that looked at communes in the US in the 18th century. The "survival" rate of such communes decades on was starkly different between those that were based on religion and those that weren't. The latter had a very low survival rate.
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