Comment on People who reject challenging ideas as stupid without engagement are like intellectual nepobabies
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 8 hours agoFor 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.
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.
Yeah, I agree that the attempt to engage is the most important aspect. What actually constitutes “engagement” is up to semantic debate.
I do think that new arguments should be evaluated, even if it’s presented in bad faith. I feel that the bad faith nature of the argument is a factor that counts poorly in my evaluation, but it’s good to have a solid understanding of the nuance in your stance, even when it comes to the ridiculous.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
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.