Inheriting their worldview from consensus or comfort, never having to earn it through actual thought.
It’s the MAGA slogan: Don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up.
Totally. Especially today people hole up in their tiny bubbles and echo chambers. Any challenges to their worldview and beliefs are rejected as woke, cultural Marxist, far left, fascist, racist, bigotry, etc. Being able to endure and process the emotions that come up, when you’re challenged is a skill people across the political spectrum have less and less. Emotions are endlessly validated regardless of facts, to the detriment of society and everyone’s wellbeing at large. The celebration of victimhood is toxic for everyone and keep them disempowered. It’s not just the left. The right has its whole „white genocide“ myth, and endless conspiracy theories about powerful evil elites.
It’s extremely prevalent here on Lemmy/Piefed as well. Actual discussion between opposing viewpoints is rare, and usually cut short by mods.
People should just talk to and more importantly listen to each other.
Whilst this statement has some merit, its problem is that you’re setting up a precursor to a straw-man argument. This is because who defines “challenging ideas”. This allows anyone to come up with a supposed challenging idea, then call anyone who doesn’t engage in it “an intellectual nepobaby”.
For example, should I engage in the “challenging idea” that the world is run by lizard people?
What about the “challenging idea” that throwing bricks in peoples faces will fix their teeth?
For example, should I engage in the “challenging idea” that the world is run by lizard people?
As a counterpoint, you likely have. You’re aware of the position, aware of the proposed evidence, and determined the evidence falls short of proof, which means you’ve engaged with their thinking before rejecting it.
It’s a good counterpoint. In my first example I definitely have thought about it previously.
In my second example it’s clearly stupid so I’m not going to engage with it. I haven’t thought about it previously (I have now !), but I don’t think that makes me an intellectual nepobaby.
But by your own admittance, you did think about it once the question was posed, so no, you’re not an intellectual nepobaby.
We have all had past experiences with how hard brick-adjacent substances affect teeth, so it’s not discarding it as a knee-jerk reaction. If you went to a dental college, and the professor made the claim before you knew better, I’d assume you’d be interested in finding out how he came to that conclusion, correct?
I get what you’re saying, but you’re kind of setting up a strawman yourself here here. Not every idea deserves endless debate, sure, it’s about the habit of dismissing things as “stupid” without even considering them. Sure, lizard people and bricks fixing teeth are absurd. But those examples are extreme on purpose, and they don’t really address the core of people rejecting ideas out of hand just because they’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable. If an idea is actually bad, it will fall apart under scrutiny. But if the default response is just “that’s dumb,” we’re not thinking critically, we’re just avoiding the work, and worse, we are participating in a culture where it’s okay to do so. Which is exactly what leads to people getting (and abusing) terrible ideas.
Remedy to stupidity isn’t LESS critical thinking.
But those examples are extreme on purpose
Yes they were! And you’re right, we need to allow ourselves to be challenged, to consider ideas outside of our comfort zone, but we also need to able to reject ideas that are not being posited in good faith.
This is the joy of debate, to question statements and receive nuanced answers in reply.
How do you determine what’s not in good faith?
I would imagine this would tie to values, but do those become the unquestionable object, then?
I assume good faith unless clear evidence indicates otherwise. I try to adopt a more general version of WP:AGF in life.
That’s a great question and I’m not sure I have a definitive answer. For lack of better description, it would be the vibe I got from them:
- Do I feel like they’re being deliberately argumentative.
- Do I feel like they’re trying to twist my words in an unkind way.
- Are they looking for ways to find offence in what I’ve said.
How do you determine what’s not in good faith?
I personally always assume good faith. I can’t read people’s minds. On the Internet, I can’t even see facial expressions or hear how they’re saying it. It’s like that Key and Peele text message sketch.
Oh my gosh, thank you for responding this way 😭
I feel like on Lemmy it’s really difficult to ever post anything but total agreement without it immediately becoming an argument. Glad we found common ground!
This is the same “good faith” argument that cultists, religious recruiters, libertarians, and racists use.
You don’t have to engage with morally abhorrent arguments out of loyalty to some platonic ideal of intellectualism. You’re allowed to tell people to fuck off.
You tell them to fuck off because you engaged with it and found it completely meritless/abhorrent, not because you’re above engaging with it. If they present new evidence for lizard people, you should skeptically examine the evidence and tell them to fuck off when it doesn’t hold up.
You don’t have to engage with them and waste your time debating them, but you absolutely should be open to challenge your own positions.
You say should, but that’s a judgment; judgments are subjective.
I’m stating my opinion on the matter…
I think you should engage with challenging ideas as the post says, I don’t think it’s an “ideal of intellectualism”, I just think it serves your own interests to be open to realize you’ve been mislead.
Lol, the irony of this being so highly upvoted on Lemmy, of all places.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
If someone brings evidence, ban them for reasons of wrongspeak.
Hard disagree. Cimate denial, vaccine denial, list goes on of weekly world news level of bs. At one point I was young enough with enough time on my hands to argue these things but nope. Not at this point. If have to be talking about something credible now for me to engage.
You personally don’t have to engage at all. In fact with the way algorithms work, very specifically do NOT engage if you’re not ready to go all in. But be aware that there are plenty of people out there ready to fill the information void with whatever nonsense that benefits them.
Nobody has to be a crusader against misinformation, but I’d strongly caution against thinking that just ignoring the problem will make it go away.
I would also caution against thinking that you can just screem yourself horse about stuff and it will make it go away. I have to deal with my life and I will engage in stuff when I have the will and time. My wife was bringing me all sorts of crap from youtube and I had to continually tell her to stop doing it. Yes I can debunk it but it can take anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours to debunk it and a well done and quality debunk takes the hours while the 10 min is just yeah you can basically see this is nonsense. But you could see its nonsense from the get go sometimes with just a bit of basic logic. Unfortunately she has not had an elementary logic class and when people do not have experience in it or appropriate education backgrounds to fully utilize it (math and science but sometimes it needs law or humanities) for many things and of course if you don’t do things like suduko or clues by sam (which is amazing) you won’t be able to do it as quickly. Those bubbles do not collapse because some folks stop by and write a paragraph debunking their claim especially when evidence is internet links. Real life I will though as those people can’t just log off or let others fill them with bunk while we are conversing. They will have to defend their position on the merits they are aware of in real time without doing web searches.
@[email protected] remind you of anyone?
…no? Help me out?
Edit: Sorry, I misunderstood you lol
That’s like 95% of humanity
Yep. It’s especially cringe when people ignore centuries of philosophical discussion. Often smugly.
Great example is when people refer to Richard Dawkins’ books as proof that there is no god. Nothing like a Reddit atheist to make me embarrassed to not believe in god.
There are also many definitions of god, and Dawkins engages with all of them. Dawkins is much more strongly opposed do theism, than deism for example. He engages with philosophical ideas about god.
Dawkins argues that we don’t need god to explain the universe, life, or anything else. He further goes on to argue that religious belief in god trains people to be irrational fanatics, which damages society, progress, science. In the end Dawkins says, there’s no proof for the existence of god, and that we would all be better off without religion. However IIRC Dawkins recognizes that religious belief can have positive psychological effects.
The new atheists have become their own subculture with its own values. The online new atheist scene also attracts people who love to argue, provoke, and pick fights. Contrarians and skeptics are not the same, but can overlap.
There‘s also a pipeline that goes like this: new atheism > anti religion > anti islam > white nationalism
The issue here is that the left has abandoned its opposition to religion, especially regarding Islam, in the name of anti-racism and intersectional identity politics. So these people are rejected by the left and driven to the right.
I don’t think “the left” needs to abandon religion. I have the left in quotes because most of the time we’re actually talking about progressives. And you can’t be progressive while dictating the beliefs of others. Leftism, however, benefits greatly from being united in belief. Unity is what it’s all about. But they don’t, because leftists are usually more progressives than anything else. Even when it happens, the hive mind mentality is what makes extreme leftism easy to fall apart and easy to slip into dictatorships at high population levels. And yet, we are approaching a post scarcity, post career having society, which demands socialism to some extent. But with a reliance on globalism. And bad foreign policy in place.
I don’t have an ultimate point in this I guess. I don’t know the solution, but it’s not stamping out religion and it’s not the reactionary fascism that America is a part of now.
Great example is when people refer to Richard Dawkins’ books as proof that there is no god
As was said earlier by someone else, that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I’ve never witnessed an atheist making such an argument. Usually it’s the theists getting hung up on him because they are used to appealing to authority figures and project.
Lucky you?
I don’t think it’s luck.
I unironically think the braindead atheism online greatly contributed to the rise of Christian nationalism we’ve been seeing in the past decade…
Isn’t it? I mean I haven’t read his stuff or otherwise cared that much but I thought that was the point.
I really don’t know.
In general I don’t quite understand the point of OP. How do you learn without learning?
Good on you for asking! Dawkins doesn’t prove there’s no God; he argues the idea isn’t necessary to explain reality. The burden of proof isn’t on him to disprove an unfalsifiable claim, it’s on those making the claim to provide testable evidence. That’s how critical thinking works.
https://youtu.be/Qf03U04rqGQ?t=301
As for “How do you learn without learning?” you don’t. But a lot of people confuse rote repetition (parroting Dawkins or the Bible) with understanding (grappling with the arguments themselves). One’s memorization; the other’s understanding.
Yeah, but, what if your thought produces something that the consensus disagrees with? Then you’re an evil person.
I’ve found that I generally don’t look down on anyone pretty much ever. I don’t get it when someone lacks intellectual curiosity, but I never look down on them for it since it’s just not everyone’s cup of tea. However, when someone has disdain or actively rejects deeper inquiry, hoo boy, I can’t help but suddenly feel a pretty aggressive anger as if they not only choose to be stupid, but are trying to socially pressure everyone else to choose to be stupid. That’s just not acceptable.
Not necessarily. There are discussions in which I dont engage with certain ‘challenging ideas’ or rather walls of statements that need to be evaluated and put into context. If i know already that this discussion is not important enough for me and the points provided are not promising and novel (for me) enough, aka stupid on first glance, to later invest the time to revisit those ideas, research, evaluate and putting them into context, which no one can do for me, than i may not bother with those points to begin with. Afterall one cant be bothered with all stupid ideas about something that exists. Written forms of auch discussions are there more productive since one can do the research etc. in the moment. Allthough that to takes time.
In short no one has the time to truly interlectually and honestly engage all ‘challenging ideas’ there are. One must always make a certain preselections, with very shallow engagement.
One might have to smuggle in an ‘…all [challengin ideas …]’ to make this statement more accurate.
This ist very true. Maybe the proposed challenging Idea ist Not as Genius AS you think or you weren’t able to communicate it’s advantages good enough. Additionally If a Individuum regularly has 9/10 haywire ideas maybe the 1/10 genius Idea gets guilty of association (sry, but people are people).
I watched a video of a guy complaining about something similar and it ended with a really good phrase: don’t even bother engaging with non-apple rotators
What are non-apple rotators?
People who can’t rotate an apple in their head. In the context of the video - people who don’t interact with abstract arguments and think you’re talking about specific things or people instead
Aha, I gotcha. That’s a pretty apt analogy, I like it. Yeah, it’s pretty frustrating talking philosophy with someone and they’re all like “it’s not that deep, bro”, when in reality, it’s a hotly contested topic in academic philosophy. So I guess it’d be like “bro, it’s just a flat, red surface” when you’re trying to talk about how the stem is attached to the core in a way.
I interact with abstract arguments but can’t rotate an apple in my head because of aphantasia. I can easily handle the concept of rotating an apple though.
Funny enough, my ability to estimate how three dimensional objects fit into real space is really good despite not being able to visualize it.
This is crazy to me. I would have gone insane as a child if I couldn’t have imagined badass scenarios in my head when I was bored.
I drew a lot and made physical things!
Also read a lot, but had concepts and not images. Like a car in a story might remind me of a car I had interacted with even if I couldn’t picture it. Like a sports car feels fast and nimble even if I can’t picture the curves. Maybe it is rounded or has sharp angles on that model, but I can’t picture the actual curves or angles.
Intellectual nepobabies? I don’t know what that means! These words challenge me, and I want no part of that! Nooooope! I will not think about such things! I mean really! What even is “nepobabies”? Did you mean “muppet babies”? Because they stopped making that show a while ago…
It sounds like it implies the parents being smart which varies a lot. Like it varies if children listen to their parents.
Also it can vary on mood, energy and personal feelings a lot if someone is open to (for them) difficult concepts
U might get banned from lemmy for saying this its all hivemind here.
