Bigotry and hate speech should not have a platform. I’ve been reading a lot of comments here and it seems like most of them aren’t even critical or touch on the point of NOT allowing certain kind of speech or false information sharing. In Germany nazi related sympathizing, propaganda is banned from social media. But some how it’s ok in USA? I honestly fail to understand how little criticism there is of unfettered fre…
Do you think its possible for you to understand?
Would you want to understand and learn new things?
If you knew that honestly understanding would lead to mental pain and anguish as you literally would have to admit you were wrong in your past judgements and admit your view of the world was wrong, would you still want to understand? Because it will cause you pain. It even might lose you friends. Changing your mind is hard. Learning new things about the way the world works means you have to remove whatever was in that place before and you do that by admitting you were wrong. If you've been on HN for a while you will agree with me that having people admit they were wrong is extremely rare! It hurts.
Most people don't want to understand. It's much easier not to.
I applaud a sincere expression of not understanding, so congratulations! It means that somehow you know that your view of the world is not complete. I would suggest that instead of asking for answers from others which you can disagree with, true understanding requires a fundamental and painful change in your own brain.
Empathy is just one tool to help understand and work out how you were wrong, there are others. It won't mean you start to believe the ideas just that for the first time you will start to see that there are other ideas.
There is potential danger, however, that what caused your initial attachment to a particular view of the world might switch to these other newer ones. Like how an ex-cult member is always the most vocal anti cult activist, or how a recent Vegan is always the most evangelistic about their new way of life. Empathy alone doesn't cause that, but maybe a kind of stockholm syndrome, so take it slow and try not to be overwhelmed.
Even if you feel like you could start to understand, there is also the fear and disgust of the other which you would need to overcome to begin. For many this fear and disgust is so strong it's enough to stop any thoughts of change. (it's why fear and disgust is so often used as a political tool)
I'm not asking you to change and I don't expect you to change. Change hurts. I'm warning you about the dangers of understanding others if you really wanted to understand what's going on which I hope you might.