cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13958637
The fastest way to an echo chamber is to ignore everyone who disagrees with you.
You should be intelligent enough and convicted in your understanding of any point you argue strongly, that you will be able to identify an irrational or false argument.
Otherwise when someone you disagree with has a good point that improves your view point, you will miss it.
Take the show always sunny in philadelphia. The characters are all examples of absolutely terrible people. We use their idiocy, bigotry, racism and general prejudice to further confirm our beliefs and views on any topic.
It is healthy to listen to bad takes.
The fastest way to an echo chamber is to ignore everyone who disagrees with you.
This isn’t about the entire set of people who disagree.
It is a waste of time to engage some kinds of people. They are not acting in good faith.
There’s a Sartre quote about it
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
I believe it helps to be able to identify bad faith actors. If you have never heard their arguments before then you run the risk of not realising its a bad faith argument. This could mean you end up taking them seriously.
Let me help you out:
There are NO sound arguments for racism, fascism etc.
None.
There is no point in listening to racists and fascists.
Ever.
Found another one of them.
Just in case it’s not clear, there are indeed people with ideas so toxic and so dangerous they need to be removed. Otherwise they will ruin it for everyone. When you tolerate the intolerant, tolerance is eventually seized and destroyed by the intolerant.
This isn’t a case of disagreeing, this is by far the most common misrepresentation that centrist apologists use to try and vilify the banning and ostracizing of bigots and harmful ideology. There is no comparison to disagreeing about flavors of ice cream, to not wanting someone who hates trans people in your community where trans people hang out. Any attempt to do so is a bad faith comparison, because they are not equivalent.
How do you know what a toxic idea is if you never hear one. It is helpful to know what is wrong when trying to determine what is right.
I never said let people with bad takes in. I said hear them and disagree with them. Having such terrible takes in the air is a great way to strengthen your position when you are able to point out the absurdity of the bad argument.
If we close ourselves off to all the arguments we dont like then we run the risk of becoming so entrenched in our own opinion being the only right one that we never let anyone tell us we are wrong.
Finding the right path is a group effort, and it takes good and bad views to get there.
Just look at your agument, its so matter of fact. It feels like you have determined the correct position so all other views are wrong. The opening sentence “found another one” is enough to see this. You arent right automatically because you have had enough people agree with you. Especially whn you reject any opposing or even slightly different view point.
The line is where their words cross over from speech to violence. When they call for eliminating people from society, you can remove them by the same methods they advocate.
“Toxic and dangerous” are relative terms. When the moderation team closes the Overton window enough that Chocolate ice cream qualifies as “toxic”, the only dissent you can still have is between natural and artificial vanilla flavoring.
there are indeed people with ideas so toxic and so dangerous they need to be removed.
Probably. But the argument is about who gets to decide who they, not whether they exist.
Nazis are identified by their affiliation with the Nazi party. People you think are Nazis are identified by your opinion of them and absolutely nothing more.
If you could provide an objective definition of these ‘apologists’, we might have something to discuss, but clearly there can be no such definition, these are not facts like the shape of the earth or the speed of light.
We (almost) all agree that some levels of intolerance should not be tolerated, what we disagree on is which opinions confer such a status on someone.
You should be intelligent enough and convicted in your understanding of any point you argue strongly, that you will be able to identify an irrational or false argument.
yeah, no.
“identifying irrational and false argument” takes time and we have only limited amount of it here on earth. also, once you have identified irrational and false argument, there is no need to do it over and over again. we are under no obligation to sort through a pile of crap just to show we are the better people (whatever that phrase means for anyone)
and i say that as someone who was recently banned for “trolling” by some kid on a power trip to protect his cult from my arguments, so i should have understanding for your line of reasoning, but i don’t.
as always in life, it is a matter of degree and it can be relative (which is the phrase that irself can be used to excuse almost anything, 😂)
Wait, because your time is limited on earth, you shouldn’t learn how to identify bad actors? I think it’s a pretty basic and vital skill. Am i misunderstanding you. Are you saying we should all be gullible fools and rely on some unknown force to sheild us from bad arguments?
you shouldn’t learn how to identify bad actors?
bad actor is not the same as bad argument. once you know someone is bad actor, you can just ignore them or kick them out and you don’t have to bother with dissecting every single one of their sentences.
for example, after reading multiple comments by you, mainly defending asshole’s right to bother others because what if they had some brilliant thought one day, i have come to conclusion that i don’t want to waste any more time on your bad trolling and i am perfectly fine risking that i will miss some brilliant thought by you. welcome to my blocklist.
