Comment on People who reject challenging ideas as stupid without engagement are like intellectual nepobabies
SpiffyPotato@feddit.uk 23 hours ago
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?
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.
Should implies a subjective judgment.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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!
For example, should I engage in the “challenging idea” that the world is run by lizard people?
As a counterpoint, you likely have. You’re aware of the position, aware of the proposed evidence, and determined the evidence falls short of proof, which means you’ve engaged with their thinking before rejecting it.
Confirmation bias is an incredibly stubborn human trait (and a near universal one at that). The particular issue this post is engaging with is called attitude polarization: two groups of people diverging more and more in their opinions despite being presented with the same evidence.
Why are humans like this? I think it’s a survival trait that people conform to the opinions of their in-group and are reluctant to let go of opinions that are most central to their world-view. They’ve already invested a lot in both their in-group and their world-view, so rejecting all that is more costly to them than rejecting the truth about some particular fact (that they may not even care about that much).
When you consider that beliefs and openly held opinions have different costs and different benefits depending on which group you belong to, it becomes a lot less obvious that abandoning a position is the right move.
It’s a good counterpoint. In my first example I definitely have thought about it previously.
In my second example it’s clearly stupid so I’m not going to engage with it. I haven’t thought about it previously (I have now !), but I don’t think that makes me an intellectual nepobaby.
But by your own admittance, you did think about it once the question was posed, so no, you’re not an intellectual nepobaby.
We have all had past experiences with how hard brick-adjacent substances affect teeth, so it’s not discarding it as a knee-jerk reaction. If you went to a dental college, and the professor made the claim before you knew better, I’d assume you’d be interested in finding out how he came to that conclusion, correct?
Yes, you assume correctly. I would be interested in finding out how they came to that conclusion!
I think in a different thread, the question of whether the other person was presenting something in good faith came up. I think my original statement was more geared towards dealing with those types of things. I don’t need to engage with everyone if they’re not willing to engage back.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 5 hours ago
You just don’t want to engage the challenging idea of defining “challenging ideas.”