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The Righteousness Fix

orionmagazine.org

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Re: The Righteousness Fix

#51

Post by edmcnulty101 »

sheepdestroyer wrote: post #37
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #20

So many people are receiving this article very positively but am I the only one here who’s struggling to understand it? Why do the comments here make it seem as if it is impossible to be right but come off as merely being “self-righteous” because one is being engaged by someone else who is wrong and proud? Where do we draw the definition of when someone is being self-righteous? Is it possible to be self-righteous whe…

We can't go far as a specie by denying that objective truth exists, and thus that in an argument there's, more often than not, someone who is less wrong. We must aim to be collectively less wrong. But that won't happen without rightly self-righteous people fighting the bad ideas. Doesn't mean they have to lack compassion for the mistaken though.

Usually both sides of arguments both have truth to them and the way to objective truth exists via trying to understand why both sides believe what they do.

Athiesm seems like the objective rational truth.

But why do billions of people believe in an invisible man in the sky?

What is the objective truth that we can learn from that?

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#53

Post by narag »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #20

So many people are receiving this article very positively but am I the only one here who’s struggling to understand it? Why do the comments here make it seem as if it is impossible to be right but come off as merely being “self-righteous” because one is being engaged by someone else who is wrong and proud? Where do we draw the definition of when someone is being self-righteous? Is it possible to be self-righteous whe…

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 is sometimes people doesn't understand what you meant.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#55

Post by ff317 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #27
giraffe_lady wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's the right question. It assumes both parties only hold the views they do out of ignorance or "fallacies" whatever that means here. That's not necessarily the case at all, often groups oppose each other out of a clear-eyed understanding of the incompatibility of their values. More understanding won't resolve that conflict.

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt makes this nicely clear. He claims that liberals mostly value fairness and harm avoidance. More conservatives in addition also value authority, ingroup and purity. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind ). To me this rings intuitively true and strongly validates your point. To me ingroup, authority and purity are at best suspect if not actively negative, so there see…

The labels applied to liberals here are ones with positive connotations, and the labels applied to conservatives have negative ones. One could choose other labels that make for a different obvious outcome.

Most political debates are more about straw-person demonization of the other side rather than understanding each others' underlying rationales, issues, or values. Understanding might not always lead to some great compromise, but it would still be helpful if the debate were elevated to the real issues instead of meaningless attack soundbites. Almost everyone in the media on both sides of any debate does understand the real issues, but chooses to pump ratings with soundbite attacks instead, to all of our detriment.

And to put some balance on your critique of conservatism:

Small-c conservatism has a positive purpose in the government of a nation - it's the impulse to not change things; to value stability. Whatever we're doing now, however stupid it may seem on the surface, is what got us this far. There's no guarantee the latest radical new idea which sounds great on its surface won't cause an unforeseen long-term fallout that wrecks society. The world isn't a science lab or a startup: the lives and happiness of millions are at stake with every decision. There's a liberal impulse to fix everything that looks wrong with bold new ideas, and a balancing conservative impulse to avoid making sweeping changes to the machinery of society without a lot of time and care.

The extremes of both impulses, unchecked, are not healthy. A government which is extremely conservative never rights the wrongs of the past or improves the lives of its citizens, or even reacts to obvious changes in the natural world or other competing societies. It's locked in stasis, and thus is doomed to decline. On the other end of things, a great example of the potential horror of government being too liberally-bold with new ideas would be China's Great Leap Forward, which I would humbly summarize as an attempt to swiftly enact radical changes to a society, which sadly and unintentionally caused a famine which killed millions.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#56

Post by watwut »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #51
sheepdestroyer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't go far as a specie by denying that objective truth exists, and thus that in an argument there's, more often than not, someone who is less wrong. We must aim to be collectively less wrong. But that won't happen without rightly self-righteous people fighting the bad ideas. Doesn't mean they have to lack compassion for the mistaken though.

Usually both sides of arguments both have truth to them and the way to objective truth exists via trying to understand why both sides believe what they do. Athiesm seems like the objective rational truth. But why do billions of people believe in an invisible man in the sky? What is the objective truth that we can learn from that?

I think that this is fundamentally untrue. Middle between truth and lie is a lie.

When you are trying to find truth purely by searching middle of what people say, you are enabling bad actors and punishing honest people.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#57

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #35
cousin_it wrote: post #11

Quoted post unavailable.

> The world didn't used to be like that. I credit Christianity with the invention of proselytizing; religions before it (including Judaism, its immediate parent) were content to stay with a given tribe and not try to spread. False. Christianity got proselytism from its immediate parent, Second Temple era Judaism, which was also a proselytizing religion (or, at least, had proselytizing subsets.) Later, including moder…

[deleted]

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#58

Post by dragonwriter »

narag wrote: post #53
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #20

So many people are receiving this article very positively but am I the only one here who’s struggling to understand it? Why do the comments here make it seem as if it is impossible to be right but come off as merely being “self-righteous” because one is being engaged by someone else who is wrong and proud? Where do we draw the definition of when someone is being self-righteous? Is it possible to be self-righteous whe…

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-whistles here.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#59

Post by edmcnulty101 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #27
giraffe_lady wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's the right question. It assumes both parties only hold the views they do out of ignorance or "fallacies" whatever that means here. That's not necessarily the case at all, often groups oppose each other out of a clear-eyed understanding of the incompatibility of their values. More understanding won't resolve that conflict.

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt makes this nicely clear. He claims that liberals mostly value fairness and harm avoidance. More conservatives in addition also value authority, ingroup and purity. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind ). To me this rings intuitively true and strongly validates your point. To me ingroup, authority and purity are at best suspect if not actively negative, so there see…

ALL people value fairness and harm avoidance. They just define 'what' or 'to what level' is fair or harmful, differently than you.

It shows the bubble one lives in to think otherwise.

It's very telling that you apply more favorable labels to one group and labels associated with negative outcomes to another.

Re: The Righteousness Fix

#60

Post by edmcnulty101 »

ff317 wrote: post #55
ajmurmann wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt makes this nicely clear. He claims that liberals mostly value fairness and harm avoidance. More conservatives in addition also value authority, ingroup and purity. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind ). To me this rings intuitively true and strongly validates your point. To me ingroup, authority and purity are at best suspect if not actively negative, so there see…

The labels applied to liberals here are ones with positive connotations, and the labels applied to conservatives have negative ones. One could choose other labels that make for a different obvious outcome. Most political debates are more about straw-person demonization of the other side rather than understanding each others' underlying rationales, issues, or values. Understanding might not always lead to some great c…

> The labels applied to liberals here are ones with positive connotations, and the labels applied to conservatives have negative ones. One could choose other labels that make for a different obvious outcome.

I thought the exact same thing. I don't think people even realize when they're being rightous.

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