I hate people

[Cassius Clay]

[Raxivace]

I'm clicking for full HD resolution but nothing is happening.

EDIT: Ah nevermind I see that image under the black filter now.

[Anakin McFly]

what they believe and value depends on what they experience and what they think about that experience

In the beginning at least, I think it has much more to do with what they are taught (by parents, peers, society). As they age and experience new things, some of those beliefs may be challenged, but others may not be and remain in that initial (possibly bigoted) state.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

I agree. That's why religion gets passed down from generation to generation. People don't choose those beliefs - they're very much taught.

[Cassius Clay]

People adopt their parent's values/attitudes/beliefs/way of life not merely because they were "taught"...but because they are sanctioned/legitimized/validated life paths. If I become a pilot because my daddy was a pilot, it's not merely because I was "taught" to be a pilot. Being a pilot is not a belief...it's a choice...it's a practice. Bigotry is a validated/sanctioned practice....willful ignorance is a practice. What I'm trying to stress is to stop framing the issue(or solution) as strictly cognitive/intellectual...it's much bigger than that. Stop giving the benefit-of-the-doubt and being naively charitable to people who are not acting in good faith...that makes you part of the problem.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Actually religion is pretty good example. People don't just choose to adopt their parents' religion because they "sanctioned/legitimized/validated life paths" but because they are taught from birth that that religion is the absolute truth and "all good people" have to follow it.

There's no element of choice given. If there was, there would be a much higher rate of people changing religion, dropping their religions or picking up new ones. But the vast majority of people that are born into a religion stick with that religion because they are indoctrinated into it from birth.

How many years have spent on imdb arguing with the various believers there? (And I don't mean the trolls) And no matter what logical arguments were used or evidence presented, they were still convinced that they were right - that their beliefs were true.

And many other beliefs can be the same. If you're brought up in an environment that tells you from birth that your race is superior to other races, or that the socialist aspirations for your country that your beloved leader has are all that is keeping you safe from the hordes out that that just want to exploit and enslave you and who will lie to you at every opportunity then you may take a colossal amount of persuading to be convinced otherwise. It's not wilful ignorance - it's simply ignorance.

[Cassius Clay]

Could you give me an example of what would qualify as willful ignorance to you?

[Eva Yojimbo]

what they believe and value depends on what they experience and what they think about that experience

In the beginning at least, I think it has much more to do with what they are taught (by parents, peers, society). As they age and experience new things, some of those beliefs may be challenged, but others may not be and remain in that initial (possibly bigoted) state.

I would include "what they're taught" in the "what they experience" category. I essentially agree about some beliefs being challenged (most controversial ones probably are at some point, unless they live in a really insular environment), but the issue is how they cognitively process those challenges. Once the brain is locked into a belief-state, especially if high value is placed on that belief, then it becomes extremely easy for that brain to reject or ignore such challenges through irrational means, and typically unconsciously so.

What I'm trying to stress is to stop framing the issue(or solution) as strictly cognitive/intellectual...it's much bigger than that. Stop giving the benefit-of-the-doubt and being naively charitable to people who are not acting in good faith...

I don't understand how it can be "much bigger" than the "cognitive/intellectual," since ANY choice or practice comes down to how the brain functions. You can't utter hate speech without your brain telling your mouth and tongue how to form the syllables, and your brain wouldn't be telling your mouth/tongue to do that if not for the things it's come to believe and the (irrational) reasons it came to believe them. For the nth time, I don't have a clue why or how you think I'm being "naively charitable" to bigots in framing it as a cognitive/rational issue. You've never really given any example of how I'm doing this, or even why framing it in such a way is giving license to do such. You simply make the claim based on... nothing, as far as I can tell.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Could you give me an example of what would qualify as willful ignorance to you?

As the point I was making is that there's no such thing as wilful ignorance... not really. The clearest way to put it as an example would be to ask a devout believer to stop believing in God. No matter how much they might say their willing to do entertain the arguments that are put in front of them, they're just not going to change their position. It's been hard-wired into them so long and so hard that they can't - it's not that they're choosing not to.

So there's nothing wilful about it. It's not so much a question of arguing it out of them or re-educating them. It's more a question of changing the entire environment that they were raised in so it never happened in the first place. They are effectively a lost cause and all legislation can do is limit their right to damage others with their beliefs.

[Chuckles_Otoole]

Could you give me an example of what would qualify as willful ignorance to you?

As the point I was making is that there's no such thing as wilful ignorance... not really. The clearest way to put it as an example would be to ask a devout believer to stop believing in God. No matter how much they might say their willing to do entertain the arguments that are put in front of them, they're just not going to change their position. It's been hard-wired into them so long and so hard that they can't - it's not that they're choosing not to.

So there's nothing wilful about it. It's not so much a question of arguing it out of them or re-educating them. It's more a question of changing the entire environment that they were raised in so it never happened in the first place. They are effectively a lost cause and all legislation can do is limit their right to damage others with their beliefs.

Believers *can* recover from what they've been taught, but you're correct in that it's the exception rather than the rule. And even after recovery, those beliefs are still ingrained deep down at a knee-jerk, instinctive, unconscious level. We're not "taught" religion- we're *conditioned* with it.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Could you give me an example of what would qualify as willful ignorance to you?

As the point I was making is that there's no such thing as wilful ignorance... not really. The clearest way to put it as an example would be to ask a devout believer to stop believing in God. No matter how much they might say their willing to do entertain the arguments that are put in front of them, they're just not going to change their position. It's been hard-wired into them so long and so hard that they can't - it's not that they're choosing not to.

So there's nothing wilful about it. It's not so much a question of arguing it out of them or re-educating them. It's more a question of changing the entire environment that they were raised in so it never happened in the first place. They are effectively a lost cause and all legislation can do is limit their right to damage others with their beliefs.

I think there can still be such a thing as "willful ignorance" even in the situation you describe, but it would really depend on how we define the term--and the semantic ambiguity is one reason I dislike such vague terms. I'd rather bring it back to a more reductionist explanation of what's happening in a mind that's being "willfully ignorant:" things like cognitive dissonance, the literal ignoring of presented facts or the attempt/desire to explain away those facts, cherry-picking/confirmation bias/disconfirmation bias, belief in belief (Dennet), status quo bias/system justification theory, bandwagon effect, Dunning-Kruger, conservatism bias, all of the various biases behind Belief Perseverance. Depending on how you define "willful," I think you can or cannot classify these general reactions as "willful ignorance."

I think too much emphasis, in general, is put on the notion of "choice" and "will." The mind is more fluid and messily interrelated than our language gives it credit for. I don't think there's any discrete split between, say, "instinct" and "conscious choice." In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahnemann naturally plays on our intuitive splitting of these two modes, but I think it's easily glossed over how much of a messy "in between-ness" there is between the unwilled, unconscious, instinctual actions, beliefs, and ideas that become embedded in our mind without our awareness, and what we consider to be the willed, conscious, intellectual "choices" that we make; in particular I think the former, and all the various cognition it gives rise to, inevitably and profoundly influences the latter. It doesn't matter how "slowly" and "consciously" you consider or think about something if the mental processes behind that thinking are skewed from the get-go.

My primary point in addressing this issue is much what you say in your second paragraph: you have to change the environment so that this cognitive skewing doesn't happen from the start. I refer to Tolstoy for one of the best quotes on the subject: "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

[Anakin McFly]

It's interesting that that Tolstoy quote could also support Troy's point more - that most intelligent man evidently isn't lacking in cognitive power, and if that belief he already holds without a shadow of a doubt is a bigoted one, then it's not a matter of intelligence but character (stubborness?) that's stopping him from being convinced.

[Eva Yojimbo]

It's interesting that that Tolstoy quote could also support Troy's point more - that most intelligent man evidently isn't lacking in cognitive power, and if that belief he already holds without a shadow of a doubt is a bigoted one, then it's not a matter of intelligence but character (stubborness?) that's stopping him from being convinced.

I haven't disagreed with that point, and I'd have to make a distinction that what I'm talking about isn't intelligence but rationality; I'd describe the difference as the capacity for thinking/understanding (intelligence) VS the correct/incorrect ways of thinking (rationality). The capacity to think doesn't guarantee you'll hit on the correct ways of thinking. Philosophy is full of some of history's most intelligent people that were wrong in large part because they couldn't counteract the deleterious processes of their own mind. To do better you have to be lens that sees itself, and it starts with understanding how the lens is flawed from the start.

What Troy is describing as character/stubbornness to me still boils down to various rational/cognitive issues, the way in which the mind goes wrong in forming a belief, choosing to act on it, and the reasons why it has such difficulty letting go in the face of contradictory evidence.

[Cassius Clay]

I'm saying that there's a fundamental orientation problem some of you are overlooking. That orientation isn't addressed by dealing with the results of it...which what you're doing when you frame the issue strictly in terms of ignorance and irrationality. When you are acting true to your orientation, you are not behaving "irrationally". To insist on that is to miss the damn point. I'm starting to suspect you're missing the point because of fundamental orientation differences...like having an obsession with logic/reason, for example.

Eva, you brought up the is/ought gap earlier, so I'll put it this way: you're insisting on framing an "ought" issue as an "is". You're acting like you can ultimately solve an ought with an is. I'm saying that people (like bigots) are acting on oughts that are fundamentally different from mine (I don't know about yours)...though they may appear to merely "misunderstand"* reality. Oughts cannot come from an is. I'm sure you intellectually know that, but you're not acting like you know that...unless you're not understanding that as my fundamental point. You can disagree with the assertion all you want, but try and at least grasp the point.

*Sometimes they appear to misunderstand reality because they actually are lying or somehow being deceptive about their values/orientation. For example, racists often pretend to believe in equality...white supremacists rarely admit that they are white supremacists. Shitty people rarely just own up to their "oughts"...they either hide them, and pretend they share yours(then gaslight the shit out of you), or they act as if their oughts are somehow "objective"...and not just the way they want the world to be. So, they'll engage with you with the pretense that they share your values, while seeming to support a hidden orientation by framing things in deeply dishonest ways. So, I don't think you're getting to the core of the issue by framing things strictly in terms of ignorance and irrationality. I'm not saying logic and reason aren't useful tools at certain times...it's sometimes useful to blow a hole in a bigots reasoning. But, don't treat it as the solution...to something that is fundamentally an orientation/character/values problem.

And do you really need me to explain why insisting on being charitable(maintaining the pretense of good faith) with a bigot who is lying about their values, is a futile and/or dangerous exercise? I really hope not.

Edit: I saw someone put it this way recently: "bigotry is learned behavior that's reinforced via rewards". That isn't reducible to a "misunderstanding" of reality. That's a character problem. Character isn't reducible to irrationality. And I find it very strange that you seem to be attempting to do just that. Anakin got to the heart of the matter with a simple statement...that one can be "dumb" with good character, and another can be super smart/logical with bad character. Which you seemed to acknowledge at first, but then bizarrely concluded that everything is ultimately about how you think ....therefore reason!...or something. Bruh, what's up with you?

[Cassius Clay]

@opiate I'm not using "willful" with all the free will implications you projected onto the term. That makes things unnecessarily complicated. In other words: it's irrelevant whether you think of its as "willful ignorance" or "free willful ignorance". The point is that your will is to ignore reality...whether that will is free or not is a separate question altogether. If someone, for example, refuses to acknowledge simply what is, because it makes them uncomfortable (not because they don't have the capacity to understand), they are being willfully ignorant. I think you'd agree that such a thing happens...whether you call it willful ignorance or not. I think it's a pretty well-documented and popular defense-mechanism. We've all done it. All the emotional baggage and conditioning, or whatever, doesn't change the fact that they are fundamentally choosing to ignore reality or replace it with fantasy. I'm not saying that's always morally wrong or that I lack compassion for folks who were raised in a way that created that emotional reaction. I have compassion for people ignoring "reality" as they deal with trauma and for people brainwashed/indoctrinated by religion...less so for narcissistic, fragile, white morons who find it uncomfortable to have their white supremacist fantasies challenged.

[Anakin McFly]

I've spent the past couple days in a record number of frustrating arguments about the trans bathroom laws with people who seem to have a very flimsy grasp of logic and immunity to facts, and have started to think that maybe the problem isn't their logic but the fact that they're all transphobic dicks.

[Cassius Clay]

They do that shit to frustrate you and zap your energy. Remember that Toni Morrison quote about the point of racism...how bigots are never satisfied because there's always something else. That quote is very applicable to this conversation. At some point, it's got to be understood that, for bigots, it has nothing to do with logic/reason or truth. Argumentation has it's place, but sometimes people just need a good smack in the mouth.

[Anakin McFly]

Thanks for reminding me of that quote. It's definitely relevant here. I managed to change two people's minds, but that's just two out of a whole lot. Can't help wishing that people would have directed just a fraction of this outrage and desire to protect the women and children towards Trump's actual sexual assaults, or Brock Turner, or the countless other cases where straight white cis men went around wantonly raping or abusing or murdering women and most of them just shrugged and went 'boys will be boys'.

(Or, as someone commented: "Stories like this remind me of parents who didn't want a gay male teacher in a classroom with their sons. They were scared he might try something inappropriate with their boys. But I never heard them showing any concern about a straight male teacher in a classroom with their daughters. How about that?")

so I'm grateful for the reminder. Those debates ended up taking my whole weekend and kept me from doing stuff I had to do, including plans to work on a web resource for the local trans community, which would likely make a much bigger difference to people's lives than winning arguments about bathrooms, which drives in how much of a distraction this has been.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Troy, I really feel we're just talking past each other at this point. I think I get the majority of what you're saying, but I really feel like you're not getting what I'm saying and aren't really addressing the substance and points of my last several posts. Part of the problem is that I'm trying to apply a cognitive reductionism (in the sense of "reducing something to its constituent parts") method, while you're using very vague, non-reductionist terms like "orientation" and "willful ignorance" and "character," all of which are, in fact, cognitive phenomenons themselves. I can't imagine any way you could define "orientation" to make it so that "acting true to your orientation" would mean a person wasn't acting irrationally, eg. That doesn't even make any sense.

Same with Is/Ought; I agreed earlier there are some fundamental "oughts" disconnected from what "is;" but that's an extremely simple and abstracted point. The reality is more nuanced. I think for SOME bigots the issue can come down to fundamental "ought" disagreements, but I think this happens less than you think. All human beings share certain "oughts," but the beliefs and behavior those oughts foster can vary greatly depending on what an individual experiences and how they ir/rationally process it. I gave this example last page: "you might have a core value that harming others is wrong. Terrorists harm others, so you think terrorists are bad people. You also notice many terrorists happen to be Muslim, so now you start to hate Muslims because of their link to terrorism. This is an example of how an acceptable core value ends up as unacceptable bigotry (a "value" of sorts) via bad reasoning." I think THAT chain of events, from acceptable core value to bigotry via bad reasoning and misunderstanding of reality, is probably far more common in bigots than what you'd describe as a fundamental disagreements of "oughts."

I do mostly agree with your paragraph on "appearing to misunderstand reality," but again I think we assign different causes. Some might be intentionally lying or being deceptive, but I'd say that just as many plain aren't aware of how their values are skewing their perception of reality. This goes back to what I said about how most people don't consciously value something over truth, rather they "use" irrationality as a means of squaring that value with what think is truthful (but usually isn't). There's a host of cognitive phenomena and biases that allow them to do this, and it's a simple fact that the vast majority of people are not aware they're even doing it; the brain hardly lets us in on everything it's doing while it does it.

I'm not saying logic and reason aren't useful tools at certain times...it's sometimes useful to blow a hole in a bigots reasoning. But, don't treat it as the solution...to something that is fundamentally an orientation/character/values problem.

And what do you think it is that accounts for how "orientation/character/values" comes to be? How can you offer any explanation that doesn't reduce down to what people experience and how they think about those experiences? You act as if bigotry is an "orientation/character/value" that springs arbitrarily and magically out of nowhere into the minds of people, that it's completely disconnected from their experiences of reality and how their mind processes that reality. I've offered numerous examples of how misunderstandings of reality combined with bad reasoning can result in a mind holding bigoted beliefs; I think those examples count for an enormously huge chunk of the bigots out there now. My original point was that if you introduce rationality (and the value of truth) into education early, you can reduce--not eliminate--many kinds of bad thinking that can give rise to bigoted beliefs.

Now, yes, there will still be the bigots out there that have fundamental values and "oughts" that aren't grounded in any false perceptions of reality, nor irrationality. However, I don't know what you think you can really do about such people. You've said "confront" them, but confront them with what? How do you confront a fundamentally different value with anything other than a "My values are different and yours suck by my standards?" The problem with fundamental oughts, in general, is that there's really no factual way to refute them. You can resort to tactics like shame and social pressures, but this typically just results in what you describe: deception, lying, these types going "underground" and forming their own communities.

Obviously if you KNOW someone is lying/being deceptive then there's no reason to be "charitable," but unless you hook them up to some lie detector or discover some admission you can rarely be certain because irrationality can pretty well mimic all of the same symptoms. However, I don't think what I'm describing is being "charitable" anyway. I'm just as horrified with bigotry regardless of how someone has arrived at that point; I don't feel those that get there via irrationality and misunderstandings of reality are any less to blame or less guilty than those that get there via different values. The only difference is that I see a way to address the former on a fundamental level via education, while there's not much that can be done with the latter outside of the aforementioned social pressures.

Character isn't reducible to irrationality. And I find it very strange that you seem to be attempting to do just that. Anakin got to the heart of the matter with a simple statement...that one can be "dumb" with good character, and another can be super smart/logical with bad character. Which you seemed to acknowledge at first, but then bizarrely concluded that everything is ultimately about how you think ....therefore reason!...or something. Bruh, what's up with you?

Just to point a summary stamp on it: character is reducible to how people act, how people act is reducible to how they think, and most (not all) of what and how they think is reducible to what they experience and ir/rationality. That you reduced my response to Anakin to... that... is as good as evidence as any that you're not getting what I'm saying.

[Anakin McFly]

I gave this example last page: "you might have a core value that harming others is wrong. Terrorists harm others, so you think terrorists are bad people. You also notice many terrorists happen to be Muslim, so now you start to hate Muslims because of their link to terrorism. This is an example of how an acceptable core value ends up as unacceptable bigotry (a "value" of sorts) via bad reasoning."

I disagree with this, because character and experience can intervene in that chain. I'm guessing it would play out very differently - even with the exact same reasoning capability - if that person happened to have close friends or family who are Muslim, for example. Or if they have a character or worldview that's extremely averse to judging people until they have done something provably wrong. Or if they themselves have experienced being on the receiving end of that sort of reasoning (maybe they once experienced a racist hate crime on the same basis, or are close to someone who did) to the point that that reasoning is instinctively rejected because of that strong emotional reaction against it.

There's also the question of what makes them jump to Muslims in the first place. It would be just as logical (more so, in fact) to conclude: 'Harming people is bad -> terrorists harm others -> terrorists are bad -> practically all terrorists are men -> most men are terrorists -> you should hate men'. Yet this doesn't happen, not because of cognition but because it's almost certain that the person is either a man or someone who is close to people who happen to be men, and knows at once that such a sweeping statement would be ridiculous.

This wouldn't be a cognitive issue; it's why the same people who reason that Muslim terrorists mean most Muslims are terrorists don't similarly jump to label Christian terrorists as such, let alone consider Christians a threat because of it, because they already have a good impression of Christians (or at least an impression that doesn't involve acts of terrorism).

Ultimately I don't think character/reasoning can be separated so easily, and that in many instances the two of them work together. But from experience, it's far more common for character to trump logic, and for logic to trump character requires good character in the first place, with a personal commitment to truth, even when it goes against one's long-held beliefs. It requires strength of character and personal integrity to even value truth over prejudice. Someone with a 'bad' character isn't going to care what the facts say if they decide they want to harm a group of people. They'll just call it fake news, whether or not they believe it.

Probably Milo Yiannopoulos is a good example of that. I have no doubt he's very intelligent and knows half the things he says aren't true, but it hasn't stopped him from building a career out of spreading hatred against minority groups.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I disagree with this, because character and experience can intervene in that chain. I'm guessing it would play out very differently - even with the exact same reasoning capability - if that person happened to have close friends or family who are Muslim, for example. Or if they have a character or worldview that's extremely averse to judging people until they have done something provably wrong. Or if they themselves have experienced being on the receiving end of that sort of reasoning (maybe they once experienced a racist hate crime on the same basis, or are close to someone who did) to the point that that reasoning is instinctively rejected because of that strong emotional reaction against it.

You guys keep saying "character" and I can't possibly imagine what you mean by "character" except the way a person behaves; and surely you would agree that how a person behaves is rooted in what they believe and feel, and surely you would agree that what they believe and feel is dictated by a combination of experience and how they cognitively process that experience. The example I gave was merely one example of how I think irrationality could play in to forming a bigoted worldview. I wouldn't claim that it's the ONLY way it could happen, but I challenge you to think of another way that is completely independent of irrationality somewhere in the chain.

Certainly, if someone with the same reasoning ability had different experiences then they might not (probably wouldn't) arrive at the same conclusion: experience determines the data from which we can reason. So the reason the terrorists -> Muslim link wouldn't happen for them is because they have disconfirming evidence in the form of being around non-terrorist Muslims. It's much easier to make that link when you DON'T have that experience, and it's hardly a coincidence that most bigoted people happen to live in pretty insular communities with a high degree of cultural homogeneity.

There's also the question of what makes them jump to Muslims in the first place. It would be just as logical (more so, in fact) to conclude: 'Harming people is bad -> terrorists harm others -> terrorists are bad -> practically all terrorists are men -> most men are terrorists -> you should hate men'. Yet this doesn't happen, not because of cognition but because it's almost certain that the person is either a man or someone who is close to people who happen to be men, and knows at once that such a sweeping statement would be ridiculous.

Errr, but what you're describing IS cognition. If someone is a man, or knows men, who aren't terrorists, then the reason the link doesn't form in their brain is because they have evidence against the inference that terrorists -> men. One fact of cognition is that when we're introduced to anything "new" we quickly and unconsciously build up associations with it, so if every exposure you have to Muslims are through terrorists in the news, then it's easy for that inference to form. This isn't what happens with a man who knows a lot of men; they would have a large and diverse pool of associations to draw from, so seeing a terrorist who's a man isn't going to color the impression of men nearly as much as seeing a terrorist who belongs to an unfamiliar race or religion. Couple this with xenophobia (which boils down to fear of the unknown) and I think it's possible to build a pretty robust cognitive picture of a pretty common way in which bigotry can form.

Ultimately I don't think character/reasoning can be separated so easily, and that in many instances the two of them work together. But from experience, it's far more common for character to trump logic, and for logic to trump character requires good character in the first place, with a personal commitment to truth, even when it goes against one's long-held beliefs.

Really, what you're saying sounds more like what I've been saying: maybe I just haven't been saying it well. I agree character and reasoning can't easily be separated and that the two of them work together. What you call "character trumping logic" is probably, in general, what I'd describe as irrationality: it's preferring beliefs often and largely born out of ignorance and bias over evidence and the reason that would lead away from those things. The personal commitment to truth and ability to correctly reason from it is basically what I've been advocating since the beginning of this thread, with the general position that it must start early with general education.

[Anakin McFly]

I get the feeling that we're all saying more or less the same thing, but semantics is getting in the way. It's the usual logic vs emotions thing - they can't be so clearly delineated.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I get the feeling that we're all saying more or less the same thing, but semantics is getting in the way.

Yeah, I think that's part of it. My years of studying rationality has probably given me a slightly unusual definition/understanding of it than the more colloquial one. I think there may be a few real disagreements happening, but I'm not certain I can pinpoint them.