Inheriting their worldview from consensus or comfort, never having to earn it through actual thought.
But also not every idea is worth listening to. Sometimes they are a waste of time, and people who have argued in bad faith in the past don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
It’s the MAGA slogan: Don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up.
Made up as in nonexistent, yes?
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?
You just don’t want to engage the challenging idea of defining “challenging ideas.”
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.
Fair.
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?
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.
I assume good faith unless clear evidence indicates otherwise. I try to adopt a more general version of WP:AGF in life.
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.
Even with MAGAts and the wave of red that’s ever-present online?
When one assumes bad faith, one is assuming guilt. That isn’t fair. I have found it better to assume innocence, to adopt Judge Blackstone’s ratio over Judge Dredd’s.
I think it’s fair to assume those when people openly support a movement that visibly takes away the rights of marginalized groups and kills innocent people.
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!
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
If someone brings evidence, ban them for reasons of wrongspeak.
That’s like 95% of humanity
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.
Lol, the irony of this being so highly upvoted on Lemmy, of all places.
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.
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.
@mindbleach@sh.itjust.works remind you of anyone?
…no? Help me out?
Edit: Sorry, I misunderstood you lol
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…
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.
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.
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
