The good part of this: don't fall into the trap of believing the proposition "an idiot disagrees with me, so I must be right". That's solid advice, idiots believe countless true things and geniuses believe innumerable false things. The intelligence of a random interlocutor has nothing to do with the validity of their opinions, really, so it shouldn't serve as evidence one way or another. Generally, I try to pay attention to good arguments against my ideas, not good arguers.
I think the advice for who to listen to is very bad, though. He calls it being "slightly elitist", but his bar is beneath the ground. The example for discussing politics is knowing what the three branches of government are - I knew that when I was 8 and I don't think I had anything interesting to say about politics back then. I definitely couldn't have given a meaningful critique on the latest policy debate, and neither can anyone possessing merely the most basic knowledge of rudimentary facts on the topic.
I think the problem here is that we have a bias for those who agree with us that outweighs our patience in searching for oppositional opinions that are well founded. From a liberal bubble it is quite hard to find conservative viewpoints that aren't based on unobserved apriori belief or strawman arguments. It feels like being a heavyweight surrounded by lightweights and it makes me feel like I need a better sparring partner, I just can't find one...
> it’s very very easy to be negatively polarized by a ton of bad conversations with normal people about it, until you feel like the whole rest of the world is crazy
Why wouldn't the world be crazy, though? What reason do we have to assume that the world is not crazy? Most reasons are tautological when you really unpack them.
Of course the world is crazy. But so are you
Agreed, but also: Just because they're crazy, it doesn't mean they're wrong.
> Don't update positively on your extremist beliefs whenever you hear a bad argument against them
Two problems:
1. There are beliefs people hold approximately as strongly as they hold "the Sun will rise tomorrow", so "updating" is kinda irrelevant.
2. How many people actually think any of their beliefs are "extremist"? And if they don't, they won't consider the warning to apply.
And after digging in further:
3. Many people reasonably believe that their discussion circles already filter out a lot of "average people" and thus expect a higher standard of discourse from their ideological opponents. When that still doesn't happen, it naturally seems like stronger evidence.
4. (Insert generic annoyance at veganism discourse here.)
One big problem is that lately this kind of extremism has become more like a cult: even considering the idea that the “others” might have some truth (while being wrong about the rest) is treated like blasphemy
Here's One Weird Trick™ to avoid being an ideologue: be ok with being wrong.
Flipping that over: aspire to be correct in your beliefs, not in "being right".
Karl Popper (the man behind the Intolerance of Intolerance "paradox) identified it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
The key problem is social media feed boosting “engagement”. Balanced, well thought comments don't bring much engagement so they end up being ignored by the algorithm while outrageously stupid takes generate a lot of (negative) engagement, some of which being equally stupid which will bring more engagement than the sensible responses and so on. And at the end if the day, all you see in your social media feed is stupid people sharing at least some of your values arguing with even stupider people (or so you think, at least) who have the opposite views.
This is obviously harmful for society but also obviously the best outcome for the platform who wants to sell your attention to advertisers.
I like that the author doesn’t clarify what constitutes an extremist idea aside from suggesting that he doesn’t believe in any. “Extremism is when people, who are dumb, don’t know facts unlike me, who is very smart” is a kick ass theme for an essay
Read: "I did not even attempt to read the article"
"I’m not against extremist ideas on principle. I have my own, the main one being that animal welfare is a much larger urgent catastrophe than most people believe."
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What in that blog made you write him off? I also clicked through and found very thoughtful writing on the topic, though I still disagree with their position as I understand it.
His arguments would have more force if he didn’t use them to smuggle in his ridiculous vegan stuff.
He calls his position on animal welfare “extremist”. That’s hardly a smuggling.
And anyways I found his linked blog post pretty thought provoking, even though I hold a different position than the author.
Fine. Not smuggling then “advocating”. It doesn’t actually matter, since it hurts the overall force of his point. Like, if he’s detected this trend why not learn from it himself?
I think knowing about the branches of your government is a prerequisite to having an opinion or good argument about it. It’s not sufficient to just know that but it’s a good filter in the USA where a surprising number of people have “opinions” but lack the most basic knowledge.
It's a prerequisite, but so is breathing. It's necessary but not sufficient.
The bar I like to use is pretty simple: do you know who represents you in Congress (I am American so this is my bias, but substitute your country's equivalent if there is one)? As in, your state's two Senators and your district's Representative? If not, you probably don't vote or don't pay attention when you do, and you've definitely never called your Congresspeople to complain about their votes, so you probably don't really care that much about whatever it is you say you care about, since you haven't done the easiest thing you can do to make a change.
It's not perfect, and no criteria will be, but there are tons of people who can rattle off "executive, legislative, judiciary" who nevertheless don't know ball.
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