The flip side is that many who declared themselves on the side of moral progress (eugenicists, communists, etc) were actually horribly wrong. Activists with strange sounding ideas are worth considering but the fact that they fervently believe themselves to be on the right side of history doesn’t mean they are.
Yeah it's right to take a middle path on this. You shouldn't automatically ignore protesters & campaigners, but nor should you automatically agree with them.
There's also availability bias at play here. The moralisers of the past who turned out to be wrong, history mostly forgets them. May I add to your list also the pro-paedophilia folk of the 1970s, who insisted that sexual liberation was not complete without children.
> It’s not always easy to know exactly what that is (although, this is one obvious candidate), but I’m never going to know if I plug my ears whenever I walk past someone with a picket sign.
If I listened to everyone with a picket sign, I would never get anything else done. What's the payoff?
Very few people have the time and energy to consider the emeritus of every idea they come across. Such consideration doesn’t happen in an abstract world of pure reason. It takes effort.
Castigating people for not giving full consideration to every notion, no matter how annoyingly presented, is a privilege reserved for full-time philosophers. There has to be some further quickly applicable criteria one can use to determine whether a full investigation is warranted. Many ideas do not pass that gateway.
Okay, we aren't required to evaluate deeply every idea we hear, but clearly those with high stakes, such as a particular group's moral status, are worth evaluating.
If we don't have the time evaluate some specific idea because we don't have time, the proper response is to say "I don't have an opinion on X because I don't think I need to have one" and not "Shut up about X and leave me alone"
> Okay, we aren't required to evaluate deeply every idea we hear, but clearly those with high stakes, such as a particular group's moral status, are worth evaluating.
So any gateway criteria for broader evaluation need to be 1) Easy to intrusively apply 2) Able to accurately find ideas worth your time to consider.
Is “those with high stakes” such a filter? I think not. Every single religion ever falls here, as do apocalypse cults, solipsism, simulation theory, and a bunch more. Heck, some utilitarians have said that, Ceteris paribus, black people are overall less valuable than white people because they aren’t able to live as valuable lives.
All of these claims appear to merit consideration, and yet time is limited. Even if spending a decade understanding all of religious philosophy (if such a thing were possible) was valuable, that’s not something I can do.
Now Animal rights may be different. It has a call to action, arguably a direct effect on people’s lives through the externalities of factory farming, and arguably relates to violence being influenced on sentient beings.
Still, I am personally doubtful that anyone has the time to consider all issues which raise all of these concerns. Religion would also seem to raise these three issues.
> If we don't have the time evaluate some specific idea because we don't have time, the proper response is to say "I don't have an opinion on X because I don't think I need to have one" and not "Shut up about X and leave me alone"
Technically speaking, the actions of activists for a cause don’t really relate to the Truth value of the cause. That being said, if fanatics are directly harming you for their Cause, it is entirely proper to get mad at them. If religious fanatics break into your house and try to kill you, disproving that killing you is divine command is not a prerequisite to stopping them!
(Telling someone to “shut up” may be unjustified. Speech is not violence. Preventing them from harming you is different!).
Well, one obvious criterion would be that it's a cause someone is actually challenging you on, so I don't think solipsism or simulation theory falls under that. Those groups aren't gathering outside town hall to try to change our beliefs, and they're also not moral issues
I think you're being a bit overly pedantic and uncharitable. Of course considering the views of activists doesn't commit us to not defending our homes. You're looking for some exact criteria, and I'm not going to try to determine them because you'll continue to give counter examples and we'll be here all day. I think anyone reading this can tell I think we ought apply this to things like abortion, animal rights, transgender rights, political activists - things that matter, that have initial plausibility, and we are in fact challenged on. Clearly, I don't mean we need to sit down and consider the ideas of every apocalypse cult.
Dude you’re a great writer
That's so kind! Thanks man, I appreciate the words of encouragement. I'd like to get into a habit of doing it regularly
The flip side is that many who declared themselves on the side of moral progress (eugenicists, communists, etc) were actually horribly wrong. Activists with strange sounding ideas are worth considering but the fact that they fervently believe themselves to be on the right side of history doesn’t mean they are.
Yeah it's right to take a middle path on this. You shouldn't automatically ignore protesters & campaigners, but nor should you automatically agree with them.
There's also availability bias at play here. The moralisers of the past who turned out to be wrong, history mostly forgets them. May I add to your list also the pro-paedophilia folk of the 1970s, who insisted that sexual liberation was not complete without children.
> It’s not always easy to know exactly what that is (although, this is one obvious candidate), but I’m never going to know if I plug my ears whenever I walk past someone with a picket sign.
If I listened to everyone with a picket sign, I would never get anything else done. What's the payoff?
It's a metaphor. The point is we should dismiss ideas based on their demerits not based on our finding their proponents annoying
Very few people have the time and energy to consider the emeritus of every idea they come across. Such consideration doesn’t happen in an abstract world of pure reason. It takes effort.
Castigating people for not giving full consideration to every notion, no matter how annoyingly presented, is a privilege reserved for full-time philosophers. There has to be some further quickly applicable criteria one can use to determine whether a full investigation is warranted. Many ideas do not pass that gateway.
Okay, we aren't required to evaluate deeply every idea we hear, but clearly those with high stakes, such as a particular group's moral status, are worth evaluating.
If we don't have the time evaluate some specific idea because we don't have time, the proper response is to say "I don't have an opinion on X because I don't think I need to have one" and not "Shut up about X and leave me alone"
> Okay, we aren't required to evaluate deeply every idea we hear, but clearly those with high stakes, such as a particular group's moral status, are worth evaluating.
So any gateway criteria for broader evaluation need to be 1) Easy to intrusively apply 2) Able to accurately find ideas worth your time to consider.
Is “those with high stakes” such a filter? I think not. Every single religion ever falls here, as do apocalypse cults, solipsism, simulation theory, and a bunch more. Heck, some utilitarians have said that, Ceteris paribus, black people are overall less valuable than white people because they aren’t able to live as valuable lives.
All of these claims appear to merit consideration, and yet time is limited. Even if spending a decade understanding all of religious philosophy (if such a thing were possible) was valuable, that’s not something I can do.
Now Animal rights may be different. It has a call to action, arguably a direct effect on people’s lives through the externalities of factory farming, and arguably relates to violence being influenced on sentient beings.
Still, I am personally doubtful that anyone has the time to consider all issues which raise all of these concerns. Religion would also seem to raise these three issues.
> If we don't have the time evaluate some specific idea because we don't have time, the proper response is to say "I don't have an opinion on X because I don't think I need to have one" and not "Shut up about X and leave me alone"
Technically speaking, the actions of activists for a cause don’t really relate to the Truth value of the cause. That being said, if fanatics are directly harming you for their Cause, it is entirely proper to get mad at them. If religious fanatics break into your house and try to kill you, disproving that killing you is divine command is not a prerequisite to stopping them!
(Telling someone to “shut up” may be unjustified. Speech is not violence. Preventing them from harming you is different!).
Well, one obvious criterion would be that it's a cause someone is actually challenging you on, so I don't think solipsism or simulation theory falls under that. Those groups aren't gathering outside town hall to try to change our beliefs, and they're also not moral issues
I think you're being a bit overly pedantic and uncharitable. Of course considering the views of activists doesn't commit us to not defending our homes. You're looking for some exact criteria, and I'm not going to try to determine them because you'll continue to give counter examples and we'll be here all day. I think anyone reading this can tell I think we ought apply this to things like abortion, animal rights, transgender rights, political activists - things that matter, that have initial plausibility, and we are in fact challenged on. Clearly, I don't mean we need to sit down and consider the ideas of every apocalypse cult.
You make good points, and a much weaker claim. Sounds good to me. I’ll subscribe to your blog. Excited to see what else you have to say!