The fastest way to an echo chamber is to ignore everyone who disagrees with you.
This isn’t about the entire set of people who disagree.
It is a waste of time to engage some kinds of people. They are not acting in good faith.
There’s a Sartre quote about it
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
I believe it helps to be able to identify bad faith actors. If you have never heard their arguments before then you run the risk of not realising its a bad faith argument. This could mean you end up taking them seriously.
but if you are lazy or dumb debater, it is quite easy to label anything with any negative word you pull out of your hat in order to avoid the discussion that is hard for you.
Who said there was? Dont try to strawman this. You are missing the point. And your condescension is unwarranted.
No, there is no sound argument for racism, and when you hear an argument for it, you identify its nonsense and move on. But that doesn’t mean there are no sound arguments for other things you disagree with.
Frankly, anyone can point at something that is morally wrong and say it’s wrong. That doesn’t make YOU right. Thats just essentially virtue signalling.
I disagree with fascists and racists too. But im sure there is something else out there we disagree on, such as whether or not you should block people who disagree with you.
My point is that you can’t arrive at what is right without knowing what is wrong and you can’t know what is wrong if you block everyone who disagrees with you.
You also cant rule out a person having a good take just because they also have some bad takes.
such as whether or not you should block people who disagree with you.
I don’t think anyone was making the argument to block everyone who disagrees with you. If someone wants to do a social intrigue game in DND I’m going to think that’s not the best tool for the job, but I’m not going to block them.
If someone’s like “women shouldn’t be allowed to vote” then that’s a whole different kind of disagreement.
My point is that you can’t arrive at what is right without knowing what is wrong and you can’t know what is wrong if you block everyone who disagrees with you.
I don’t know if that’s true? I don’t need to see every variation of racist argument to identify racism is bad. You don’t need to know the full set of possibilities to pick a good one. Like, you probably have reasonable interactions with dogs on the street and never considered going on all fours and aggressively pissing and howling before.
I think some of the confusion here might be that this comic is specifically referencing booting out bigots and their apologists.
if someone is willing to argue in bad faith (in this case, specifically bigots), there is no reason to listen to that or anything else they have to say since they’ve shown they are willing to argue in bad faith at all. I also think anyone who is an apologist of them is also not worth listening to because they are in bad faith by proxy.
that being said, it’s perfectly okay to have people arguing in good faith while coming to different conclusions. there can be disagreement and that is healthy as you’ve said.
This only applies though if the bigot or their apologist is willing to have an honest discussion with good intentions. The problem with tolerating them is that they do not have any respect for truth, or in having an honest discussion. Engaging with that is beyond pointless as the best it serves is to show people that already understand it to be bad that it is bad. And at worst it will confuse someone who doesn’t understand or reason well into siding with bigotry.
All this discussion of “well people should know and be able to reason” falls flat when you look at examples around the world where intolerant bigots were tolerated. The US and Germany are two examples I can think of off the top of my head. The US has a felon, fascist, wannabe dictator as one option and he has an honest chance of winning. Then in Germany they are having essentially a resurgence of the Nazi party in AfD and it’s been gaining traction, particularly in eastern states from what I’ve read.
Bigotry and hatred don’t need a platform. They do fine on their own. Giving them shelter only creates issues. You don’t need to see their arguments because their arguments don’t come from reason but from spite and they have no intention of fair engagement.
The US has a felon, fascist, wannabe dictator as one option and he has an honest chance of winning. Then in Germany they are having essentially a resurgence of the Nazi party in AfD and it’s been gaining traction, particularly in eastern states from what I’ve read.
I would argue that both cases are products of echo chambers rather than insufficient moderation.
I mean, those bigots don’t silence themselves when you ban them. They are still talking, just in forums that will ban you for daring to rebut them.
Because censorship creates the echo chambers that allow bigotry to thrive, censorship is a much greater problem than bigotry.
This isn’t about the entire set of people who disagree.
It is a waste of time to engage some kinds of people. They are not acting in good faith.
There’s a Sartre quote about it
I believe it helps to be able to identify bad faith actors. If you have never heard their arguments before then you run the risk of not realising its a bad faith argument. This could mean you end up taking them seriously.
Let me help you out:
There are NO sound arguments for racism, fascism etc.
None.
There is no point in listening to racists and fascists.
Ever.
but if you are lazy or dumb debater, it is quite easy to label anything with any negative word you pull out of your hat in order to avoid the discussion that is hard for you.
Who said there was? Dont try to strawman this. You are missing the point. And your condescension is unwarranted.
No, there is no sound argument for racism, and when you hear an argument for it, you identify its nonsense and move on. But that doesn’t mean there are no sound arguments for other things you disagree with.
Frankly, anyone can point at something that is morally wrong and say it’s wrong. That doesn’t make YOU right. Thats just essentially virtue signalling.
I disagree with fascists and racists too. But im sure there is something else out there we disagree on, such as whether or not you should block people who disagree with you.
My point is that you can’t arrive at what is right without knowing what is wrong and you can’t know what is wrong if you block everyone who disagrees with you.
You also cant rule out a person having a good take just because they also have some bad takes.
I don’t think anyone was making the argument to block everyone who disagrees with you. If someone wants to do a social intrigue game in DND I’m going to think that’s not the best tool for the job, but I’m not going to block them.
If someone’s like “women shouldn’t be allowed to vote” then that’s a whole different kind of disagreement.
I don’t know if that’s true? I don’t need to see every variation of racist argument to identify racism is bad. You don’t need to know the full set of possibilities to pick a good one. Like, you probably have reasonable interactions with dogs on the street and never considered going on all fours and aggressively pissing and howling before.
I think some of the confusion here might be that this comic is specifically referencing booting out bigots and their apologists.
if someone is willing to argue in bad faith (in this case, specifically bigots), there is no reason to listen to that or anything else they have to say since they’ve shown they are willing to argue in bad faith at all. I also think anyone who is an apologist of them is also not worth listening to because they are in bad faith by proxy.
that being said, it’s perfectly okay to have people arguing in good faith while coming to different conclusions. there can be disagreement and that is healthy as you’ve said.
This only applies though if the bigot or their apologist is willing to have an honest discussion with good intentions. The problem with tolerating them is that they do not have any respect for truth, or in having an honest discussion. Engaging with that is beyond pointless as the best it serves is to show people that already understand it to be bad that it is bad. And at worst it will confuse someone who doesn’t understand or reason well into siding with bigotry.
All this discussion of “well people should know and be able to reason” falls flat when you look at examples around the world where intolerant bigots were tolerated. The US and Germany are two examples I can think of off the top of my head. The US has a felon, fascist, wannabe dictator as one option and he has an honest chance of winning. Then in Germany they are having essentially a resurgence of the Nazi party in AfD and it’s been gaining traction, particularly in eastern states from what I’ve read.
Bigotry and hatred don’t need a platform. They do fine on their own. Giving them shelter only creates issues. You don’t need to see their arguments because their arguments don’t come from reason but from spite and they have no intention of fair engagement.
I would argue that both cases are products of echo chambers rather than insufficient moderation.
I mean, those bigots don’t silence themselves when you ban them. They are still talking, just in forums that will ban you for daring to rebut them.
Because censorship creates the echo chambers that allow bigotry to thrive, censorship is a much greater problem than bigotry.