|
One thing I don't really understand about human interactions is why people think it's a bigger insult to question someone's integrity than their intelligence.
Fairly often I encounter situations where someone is, in my mind, obviously lying. Their point is incoherent or conflicts with a lot of other statements they made, and in order for them not to see it, they'd have to never have even thought about what they are saying, not even one second.
An example I have is someone who explained to me that homosexuality was bad because it was narcissism, you're in love with someone who is like you, that's just like being in love with yourself. Obviously this logic doesn't work: in order to live to the standard of not being a narcissist, that person would have to date a disabled trans black woman who doesn't speak french and hasn't grown up in Switzerland, which, obviously, he wasn't. But to me it is inconceivable that this person doesn't realize that, so my mind cancels all of that reasoning and hears something like "I hate gay people" instead of what was actually said.
I've come to find out that people don't like it when I do that. It's divisive. When I question that person's honesty in describing his feelings towards homosexuality, it is somehow worse than if I had assumed that he was making one of the most insanely illogical points I've ever heard, seriously.
I used to think that it was a failing of mine, because I tend to apply this principle pretty liberally. This example that I gave is extreme, but I often assume dishonesty rather than irrationality. But I don't really know anymore. I think this is also tied to civility politics in a way, where we all pretend that we believe in the same principles in order to achieve living in a society together.
My honest belief is that this person thinks people who have a different sexual orientation are less human, but he can't say it because that's politically incorrect so he has to make up a stupid justification for why he hates them, instead.
Living in the world that I live in because I believe that isn't always fun. It's probably more comfortable for most people to live in a society where people have terrible logic than to live in a society where people have different moralities. I wonder how much of that plays into the perception that I'm being offensive, and that if I just pretended to believe they're intellectually incurious enough to believe the shit they say, I wouldn't be.
 
|
I can dig your point, but I think there is salvation to be had in focusing in on the thin, sometimes non-existent margins between irrationality and immorality. It is oftentimes helpful to divide those two concepts out, rationality and moral sentiment, but as organic going concerns of the conscious mind and spirit, they are twisted together and bound up with one another in a variety of ways. Personally, my preferred framework is one of trust, commitments, and some kind of first principle that turns on helping others, forestalling judgment until it is necessary, and being able to operationalize necessary judgment when and where it helps others and addresses suffering. YMMV on all that of course.
I would also quibble with the idea that most people would rather regard their opponents as holders of bad logic than different moralities, I think many people enjoy judging others are bad people, but believe they should at least try to gussy up their language with the guise of neutral argument. At the very least, you'll see more of that on a place like TL than elsewhere I'd wager.
|
"you can't make a good deal with a bad person"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2013/12/02/23-quotes-from-warren-buffett-on-life-and-generosity/#777ddd30f891
I've heard hundreds.. maybe thousands of people .... blather on about how important it is to be honest. The biggest question I have in my mind as these people prattle on is : "why be honest". None of their answers as to "why" they are honest really strikes a chord within me. Warren Buffet , however, comes closer to nailing it for me than anyone I've ever heard.
The reason I happen to be an honest at this stage in my life doesn't have much to do with morality. Should my life and personal circumstances change.. I might be less honest in the future... who knows.
|
Maybe its because integrity is something more foundational to being what we consider to be "a good person." Ignorance can be excused because you don't know any better, but a failure of integrity makes you a bad person. Obviously it's never as simple as that, but integrity could be considered core to the moral fiber of a person.
|
We judge people on their choices. Being honest is a choice. Being intelligent is not.
|
Articulation of what one feels, thinks, perceives, senses etc is not as straightforward as you seem to think, I don’t think.
Even when one tries to articulate something in good faith, that something needs not be particularly complex for there to be a lot of linguistic stumbling and fumbling around.
Distinguishing between bad faith and general human irrationality is tricky, too. We human beings are up to all kinds of things and our motivations, urges, desires, longings conflict with each other all the time and we do not generally speaking understand well what we are up to and even when we think we do, we often struggle mightily to bring that into articulation.
All of that said, could it be that you came upon someone who felt disgust and disdain for homosexuality and was too cowardly to stand by what he felt and so he tried to turn to rationality and logic to convey his feelings? I’m sure that’s a possibility.
|
On July 29 2020 16:44 Sr18 wrote:
We judge people on their choices. Being honest is a choice. Being intelligent is not.
I'm pretty sure you can make the dumbest choices as the smartest person (on purpose, accident or for fun if the stakes aren't high).
Or, one could even imagine a very smart person succumb to his vices , which in turn makes this person make bad (i.e. dumb) choices just because he needs to satisfy his vices. It's a vicious cycle.
|
calling someone a liar--at least in your mind--is assuming they got their point across perfectly.
like someone else had said, articulating yourself is not so easy.
in getting called a liar sometimes, i do get slightly offended. the distinction is that i've made a misjudgment in what i've said or reported, and i'm mistaken. in other words, it does have to do with intelligence and what you open your mouth to say.
it is very easy to whittle away that that person's logic about homosexuality = narcissism.
someone being like you has less to do with sexual identity than it is to do with social compatibility.
enjoyment of one another, or more generally, enjoyment of one thing does not equate to enjoyment of things that are similar in nature--even yourself.
the person you were speaking to hadn't considered how he would articulate what he was thinking, but he probably really does believe homosexuality is caused by or has something to do with narcissism, which he views as 'bad'.
and so him being a liar? really has nothing to do with it if you think about it.
what you're concerned about is when people do not have moral uprightness in the face of obvious information.
if you're faced with that situation again, you can try to make sure you get their story right.
there is probably a lot of a thought train that went behind what they were thinking when they said something dumb.
or simply, you could tell them that they're mistaken. wrong. misinformed. saying something illogical.
but calling them dishonest is both insulting their intelligence and also soeaking that whatever they've said is so dumb they must be trolling. and this is insulting as a whole, because it is dismissive and ridiculing in its own way.
we don't pretend. we just have different shades and levels of willingness to accept a situation, and socially--much like you do when you interact with a certain group of stupid individuals--there is a level of ignorance we all choose to practice because it is a form of cultural respect that promotes the situations where everyone can remain in harmony.
it seems that you do not practice ignoring these people and you let it bother you or you engage them for one reason or another.
|
Thanks for your answers, there is food for thought.
Sr18:
"We judge people on their choices. Being honest is a choice. Being intelligent is not."
I don't think this applies. We weren't having a super sophisticated conversation where the limits of a person's intelligence are into question. If that person was indeed honest, the issue on his part was in my opinion an extreme lack of curiosity, not a lack of capacity, and that's definitely something that he has control over.
nanaoei:
"the person you were speaking to hadn't considered how he would articulate what he was thinking, but he probably really does believe homosexuality is caused by or has something to do with narcissism, which he views as 'bad'."
I liked your post but I'd like to react against this. How do you estimate that he "probably" really does believe that?
This is the crux of the issue because of course, if it's a given that he is honest, then the rest of what you said logically follows. But I don't know how you work out that this is probably the case. To me it seems like someone feeling like they have to produce a rationale to shield their bigotry against gay people, "because of political correctness" or something like that, is much more probable than someone actually believing this nonsense.
You mention that I am insulting his intelligence if he's honest, which is true; but don't you think you are doing the same thing? I certainly think you are.
I'm reminded of something else that happened to me where there are no stakes behind the situation, and perhaps that'll help you see where my issue is. I was playing poker at a place where I don't usually play, and I happened to play a very large pot with Queen-Ten where I beat someone who held King-Queen. QT has history in the place where I normally play, we have a running joke that this is the best hand and if you lose QT vs aces it's a bad beat. There was someone at the table who was from that place, so I made a joke about QT being the best hand preflop. Someone else at the table didn't understand that it was a joke so he pulled out his phone and ran the hand on a preflop probability calculator to show me that QT was indeed behind KQ preflop.
I don't know if you play poker but it's obvious that KQ is statistically better than QT preflop, as a king is a higher card than a T, it really doesn't get any more basic than this. Now, I thought at the time and still think that his reaction is insulting; the guy assumes I'm so stupid I don't realize this extremely basic notion. I do recognize that if I honestly believed QT was better than KQ and he assumed I was joking because I couldn't possibly believe something so dumb, then that would also be insulting, sure. I just think it is clearly more charitable to assume something else is going on.
Of course the situation is not exactly the same because in this case I'm just joking, this has no impact on my values or my integrity. But I still think it's related because nobody else at the table thought what he did was an insult, and I clearly did.
|
I think sometimes people have real difficulty inferring things. I don't know how I would've reacted when you said something obviously wrong on a basic level without necessarily knowing it was a joke. It really happens all the time. You cant know how smart someone is, not even after playing a few rounds of poker. That's why I reserve judgement of others before I got more insight in the situation. That said, I do have initial judgements and they seem to be mostly right. If that's because I want them to be right or because I never went looking deeper than the tip of the iceberg, I don't know. Is that bad? I don't know either. I do know that I can't be arsed to figure everyone out on a mental level before I engage with them.
People might be tired, overworked, stressed in some way or have a million other things on their mind and based on a one time interaction with them - like in traffic for instance - if they make a simple basic mistake, I'll have the tendency of thinking they're an idiot, even if they're not necessarily one. This stuff is complex.
|
I think it is very reasonable to be more angry when you are being called dishonest rather compared to when you are being called stupid.
A lot of human interaction is based on trust, and that has been a fact throughout history. If you are a person who people think cannot be trusted, you have a lot of problems in society.
I am pretty sure that stupid person who can be trusted to tell the truth and do what they say they will do is generally viewed more favorably by society than an intelligent person who cannot be trusted, and people are far more willing to interact with them, give them a job, or have them be a part of their community. Meanwhile, no one wants to have untrustworthy people around, because you need to constantly watch them so they do not cheat you, which is usually more work than not having them around.
With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense that people absolutely do not wish to be seen as untrustworthy, and thus shunned by society. Being seen as stupid is also not nice, and something people would also prefer to avoid, but not as bad as being seen as untrustworthy.
|
On July 30 2020 01:25 Simberto wrote:
I think it is very reasonable to be more angry when you are being called dishonest rather compared to when you are being called stupid.
A lot of human interaction is based on trust, and that has been a fact throughout history. If you are a person who people think cannot be trusted, you have a lot of problems in society.
I am pretty sure that stupid person who can be trusted to tell the truth and do what they say they will do is generally viewed more favorably by society than an intelligent person who cannot be trusted, and people are far more willing to interact with them, give them a job, or have them be a part of their community. Meanwhile, no one wants to have untrustworthy people around, because you need to constantly watch them so they do not cheat you, which is usually more work than not having them around.
With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense that people absolutely do not wish to be seen as untrustworthy, and thus shunned by society. Being seen as stupid is also not nice, and something people would also prefer to avoid, but not as bad as being seen as untrustworthy.
Fair, but it doesn't follow from that person lying about this specific topic that I or society in general can't trust them in other contexts, does it? I'm not saying they're pathological.
I guess there is also a question of degree, for me. It's not like the dude was saying that he was the biggest progressive and an ally to gay people. He's still arguing against homosexuality, he just does so for a reason that is, in my mind, clearly not his actual reason for opposing it. It's a "small" distortion of his position. Whereas in order for me to assume he's honest, I would have to make, in my mind, a giant leap. If I thought he was slightly wrong about a complex topic, or if he was off about formulation or something, I wouldn't be questioning his honesty like that.
Like, does anyone think that if I could demonstrate to his satisfaction that being in love with someone of the same sex is not, in fact, the same as narcissism, that would change his view of homosexuality? I don't. I'd expect to be faced with trolling, or with another, unrelated rationale.
|
On July 30 2020 01:42 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 01:25 Simberto wrote:
I think it is very reasonable to be more angry when you are being called dishonest rather compared to when you are being called stupid.
A lot of human interaction is based on trust, and that has been a fact throughout history. If you are a person who people think cannot be trusted, you have a lot of problems in society.
I am pretty sure that stupid person who can be trusted to tell the truth and do what they say they will do is generally viewed more favorably by society than an intelligent person who cannot be trusted, and people are far more willing to interact with them, give them a job, or have them be a part of their community. Meanwhile, no one wants to have untrustworthy people around, because you need to constantly watch them so they do not cheat you, which is usually more work than not having them around.
With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense that people absolutely do not wish to be seen as untrustworthy, and thus shunned by society. Being seen as stupid is also not nice, and something people would also prefer to avoid, but not as bad as being seen as untrustworthy. Fair, but it doesn't follow from that person lying about this specific topic that I or society in general can't trust them in other contexts, does it? I'm not saying they're pathological. I guess there is also a question of degree, for me. It's not like the dude was saying that he was the biggest progressive and an ally to gay people. He's still arguing against homosexuality, he just does so for a reason that is, in my mind, clearly not his actual reason for opposing it. It's a "small" distortion of his position. Whereas in order for me to assume he's honest, I would have to make, in my mind, a giant leap. If I thought he was slightly wrong about a complex topic, or if he was off about formulation or something, I wouldn't be questioning his honesty like that. Like, does anyone think that if I could demonstrate to his satisfaction that being in love with someone of the same sex is not, in fact, the same as narcissism, that would change his view of homosexuality? I don't. I'd expect to be faced with trolling, or with another, unrelated rationale.
First, to the main theoretical point:
Yes, but if you know that someone lied (or was dishonest) once, you are less likely to trust them in the future. Very few people assume that someone who lies about one topic lies only about that topic. And we are trained by society (for the reasons i mentioned above) to never be in the position where people view you as dishonest. Which is why people fight very hard against the perception that they are dishonest.
To your second point, i absolutely agree. This is a situation where the argument followed the conclusion. He started out at "homosexuality bad", and then looked for an argument to support this. Even if you completely dismantle his argument, he would still stay at the same conclusion, because the argument was ultimately only a cover for his conclusion, not the reason for it.
But you will never get him to admit this. It is quite possible that he doesn't even view it like this himself. People love to view themselves as rational, and their decisions as based on facts and logic. But even if he were to know this about himself, he would never admit it, because that would completely dismantle everything he is basing his position in the discussion on. The cover of rationality is something he desperately needs, because (thanks to progress being made in the last few decades), it is no longer acceptable to simply say that being gay is bad just because. So he cannot allow himself to fall back to his real position, and he will do anything in his power to avoid that from happening.
|
What you're saying sounds a lot like someone who's read Thinking fast and slow.
|
I don't think i have read that book.
|
It's basically about how we let our instinct take over on so many occasions before we try to rationalize them. Or that we tend to think we're rational beings, but that we were influenced way more about our initial thoughts (our fast brain) than our analytical thoughts (slow brain).
It goes into why statistics is such a counter intuitive field among other things.
|
On July 29 2020 09:00 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
The reason I happen to be an honest at this stage in my life doesn't have much to do with morality. Should my life and personal circumstances change.. I might be less honest in the future... who knows.
A part of me loves what you said and another part of me completely disagrees with it. On one hand, I too am honest because truthfully, the consequences have been easier to bear when being honest or have worked out in my favor more often than not. While I would love be saying "well, morally lying is the wrong thing to do", I know deep down I've seen more positive effects personally from telling the truth - and whether or not that's from being honest or simply that the situations have benefited me more often than not for being honest is hard to tell.
On the other hand - some part of me sees that you can't run from the truth, and therefore, it makes sense to simply be honest about everything you do. You have to deal with the truth eventually, why hide from those consequences? Why build up this barrier you're probably going to break down or curse for the rest of your life? It doesn't always benefit you but it does make it easier to live when you realize you're not trying to step around the cracks of dishonest you've put in the ice of life.
There's a third part of me somewhere in the middle that suggests that it is these irrational thoughts that are inspiried by dishonesty that provoke people to create new inventions, write the songs we love or script the movies that speak to us on a different level. There's a certain level of dishonesty you sort of take as artist in order to make a point. No one wants to hear the details in the plain because they can't relate exactly. But when they hear me sing about how i've seen the snakes that slither around their words and with each bite I start to resist the poison - people understand that. Doesn't mean the person I wrote that about is as venomous as a snake and more times than not - i make people look worse/better as a musician to get the point across and relate.
There are so many things i feel like that relate philosophically here but i've ranted a bit too much. Anyway, this was a great blog post and I related to it on a personal level and the responses have been interesting.
|
On July 30 2020 02:08 Simberto wrote:
First, to the main theoretical point:
Yes, but if you know that someone lied (or was dishonest) once, you are less likely to trust them in the future. Very few people assume that someone who lies about one topic lies only about that topic. And we are trained by society (for the reasons i mentioned above) to never be in the position where people view you as dishonest. Which is why people fight very hard against the perception that they are dishonest.
i think most adults are liars. meh. dealing with deception is intrinsic to the human experience. what one must do is surround oneself with quality authentic people. One must build their own tiny community of high self esteem people.
"We intend to continue our practice of working only with people whom we like and admire. This policy not only maximizes our chances for good results, it also ensures us an extraordinarily good time. "
|
saying the right things in the right moment will never be easy
|
so mostly its better to say nothing
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
