I like to be proven wrong, and to have my thinking changed. I'm happy to have found a lot of people who are capable of doing that in the last few years.
You have to be very careful though, because skepticism needs to be applied at all times as well. There are lots of people out there whose sole purpose is to try to deceive you into thinking in a way that's useful for them. Therefore, you should be supple enough to be open to new ideas and new information, but strong enough to push back against blindly and stupidly believing anything that's presented to you without question.
You have to be very careful though, because skepticism needs to be applied at all times as well. There are lots of people out there whose sole purpose is to try to deceive you into thinking in a way that's useful for them. Therefore, you should be supple enough to be open to new ideas and new information, but strong enough to push back against blindly and stupidly believing anything that's presented to you without question.
I'll use two examples, one that's more leftward, and one that's more rightward.
Rightward, I've been a hard hard atheist all my life. Not only do I not believe in God, but I didn't see religion as something worth wasting any time on at all. Recently, through some seriously good arguments about the history and the philosophy of Christianity, I've come to realize that regardless of the existence of God, Christianity is an important part of the philosophical framework of the west, and a source of some of the values I personally hold important, including the justification for ultimately abolishing slavery and the slave trade. Whereas I would have previously taught my son to avoid religion altogether, I now read from his kids bible every weekend and bought him a nice leatherbound bible alongside the Confucius and Aristotle and other more traditionally philosophical philosophy.
Leftward (sort of, politics makes for strange bedfellows), I didn't really see any point to supporting either side in the war in Ukraine. It's literally on the other side of the planet from me, and it really looks like an ambiguous conflict in general between two powers neither of which seem to really deserve any support. The world leaders calling for it are unpersuasive at this moment, because it seems like they're mostly appealing to their own authority or the authority of the world rules, and the west just finished destroying that argument by breaking all our own rules. The argument that changed my mind somewhat was an analysis of history showing that times of peace came about in large part because players didn't feel like there was any benefit to going to war. So without any regard for the exact players in a given war, there's a moral argument for making it as hard as possible to make the aggressor in any war that breaks out hurt as badly as possible because once one aggressor makes significant gains in war without major consequence, it's probable that we'll start to see all kinds of wars and that won't be good for the common man anywhere.
Rightward, I've been a hard hard atheist all my life. Not only do I not believe in God, but I didn't see religion as something worth wasting any time on at all. Recently, through some seriously good arguments about the history and the philosophy of Christianity, I've come to realize that regardless of the existence of God, Christianity is an important part of the philosophical framework of the west, and a source of some of the values I personally hold important, including the justification for ultimately abolishing slavery and the slave trade. Whereas I would have previously taught my son to avoid religion altogether, I now read from his kids bible every weekend and bought him a nice leatherbound bible alongside the Confucius and Aristotle and other more traditionally philosophical philosophy.
Leftward (sort of, politics makes for strange bedfellows), I didn't really see any point to supporting either side in the war in Ukraine. It's literally on the other side of the planet from me, and it really looks like an ambiguous conflict in general between two powers neither of which seem to really deserve any support. The world leaders calling for it are unpersuasive at this moment, because it seems like they're mostly appealing to their own authority or the authority of the world rules, and the west just finished destroying that argument by breaking all our own rules. The argument that changed my mind somewhat was an analysis of history showing that times of peace came about in large part because players didn't feel like there was any benefit to going to war. So without any regard for the exact players in a given war, there's a moral argument for making it as hard as possible to make the aggressor in any war that breaks out hurt as badly as possible because once one aggressor makes significant gains in war without major consequence, it's probable that we'll start to see all kinds of wars and that won't be good for the common man anywhere.
I wasn't pro Russia, it was more like the idea that let's say that Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan went to war, and everyone is saying "Take a side!" and it's like "what? Why?" -- has nothing to do with me.
Forcing people to take sides in a discussion along a specific two sides someone else gets to define is a common political tactic. It destroys nuance and allows bad debate to become the established debate. There's a lot of discussions right now that are polarized along lines like that, and the false dichotomy is damaging the causes they're applied to. For that reason, I'm careful about going all-in on "one side" or "another" since reality might look totally different.
I'm up in Canada, and one of the loudest voices against Russia was Trudeau, hours he'd seized people's bank accounts and suspended civil rights using the emergency act for having the gall to protest policies they disagree with and smeared them with mindless attacks about things that had nothing to do with what they were protesting about. That man recently said of that time "I'm worried about setting a precedent that [a peaceful protest in the nation's capital] can lead to a change of public policy", so the idea that he's gone from telling us our fellow countrymen are the devil to saying Russia is the devil is wholly unconvincing.
Given the suspension of civil rights over a peaceful protest, the whole "rules based global order" argument was completely unconvincing as well, coming from the guy who just did that.
The media said a lot of things about how horrible the Russians were, but the same media said we'd find WMDs in Iraq, so that's how much that is worth. Counter-narratives suggested there might be a lot more than the establishment narrative would like to let on, so staying neutral seemed prudent.
The "incentives not to go to war" argument I mentioned was the one argument that doesn't need you to throw in with either side specifically, but it works as a general principle. Make it hurt for war aggressors, and people won't engage in aggressive war (Unless it's the Americans of course)
Forcing people to take sides in a discussion along a specific two sides someone else gets to define is a common political tactic. It destroys nuance and allows bad debate to become the established debate. There's a lot of discussions right now that are polarized along lines like that, and the false dichotomy is damaging the causes they're applied to. For that reason, I'm careful about going all-in on "one side" or "another" since reality might look totally different.
I'm up in Canada, and one of the loudest voices against Russia was Trudeau, hours he'd seized people's bank accounts and suspended civil rights using the emergency act for having the gall to protest policies they disagree with and smeared them with mindless attacks about things that had nothing to do with what they were protesting about. That man recently said of that time "I'm worried about setting a precedent that [a peaceful protest in the nation's capital] can lead to a change of public policy", so the idea that he's gone from telling us our fellow countrymen are the devil to saying Russia is the devil is wholly unconvincing.
Given the suspension of civil rights over a peaceful protest, the whole "rules based global order" argument was completely unconvincing as well, coming from the guy who just did that.
The media said a lot of things about how horrible the Russians were, but the same media said we'd find WMDs in Iraq, so that's how much that is worth. Counter-narratives suggested there might be a lot more than the establishment narrative would like to let on, so staying neutral seemed prudent.
The "incentives not to go to war" argument I mentioned was the one argument that doesn't need you to throw in with either side specifically, but it works as a general principle. Make it hurt for war aggressors, and people won't engage in aggressive war (Unless it's the Americans of course)
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