The good part of this: don't fall into the trap of believing the proposition "an idiot disagrees with me, so I must be right". That's solid advice, idiots believe countless true things and geniuses believe innumerable false things. The intelligence of a random interlocutor has nothing to do with the validity of their opinions, really, so it shouldn't serve as evidence one way or another. Generally, I try to pay attention to good <i>arguments</i> against my ideas, not good <i>arguers</i>.<p>I think the advice for who to listen to is very bad, though. He calls it being "slightly elitist", but his bar is beneath the ground. The example for discussing politics is knowing what the three branches of government are - I knew that when I was 8 and I don't think I had anything interesting to say about politics back then. I definitely couldn't have given a meaningful critique on the latest policy debate, and neither can anyone possessing merely the most basic knowledge of rudimentary facts on the topic.
I agree with a lot of this, and the framing is new to me and I really appreciate it. I especially appreciate the acknowledgement that there isn't necessarily anything wrong with having extreme beliefs; "extreme" is a label most often applied by antagonists of such beliefs. But I definitely feel like there can be a pipeline where one extreme belief may lead to others simply because they are also labelled extreme and not for a more recognizable reason.
What a breath of fresh air! If only people were in control of their own selves to stick to this kind of balanced and open-minded disposition.
I think the advice at the end of this post is essentially sound: you should pre-filter your evaluation of others’ opinions through their understanding of related topics. But that isn’t elitist, and I think we shouldn’t call it that! It’s a form of media and cultural literacy we should be encouraging people to have; there isn’t (and shouldn’t) be anything elite about it.
> it’s very very easy to be negatively polarized by a ton of bad conversations with normal people about it, until you feel like the whole rest of the world is crazy<p>Why wouldn't the world be crazy, though? What reason do we have to assume that the world is not crazy? Most reasons are tautological when you really unpack them.
I think the problem here is that we have a bias for those who agree with us that outweighs our patience in searching for oppositional opinions that are well founded. From a liberal bubble it is quite hard to find conservative viewpoints that aren't based on unobserved apriori belief or strawman arguments. It feels like being a heavyweight surrounded by lightweights and it makes me feel like I need a better sparring partner, I just can't find one...
> Don't update positively on your extremist beliefs whenever you hear a bad argument against them<p>Two problems:<p>1. There are beliefs people hold approximately as strongly as they hold "the Sun will rise tomorrow", so "updating" is kinda irrelevant.<p>2. How many people actually think any of their beliefs are "extremist"? And if they don't, they won't consider the warning to apply.<p>And after digging in further:<p>3. Many people reasonably believe that their discussion circles already filter out a lot of "average people" and thus expect a higher standard of discourse from their ideological opponents. When that still doesn't happen, it naturally seems like stronger evidence.<p>4. (Insert generic annoyance at veganism discourse here.)
The key problem is social media feed boosting “engagement”. Balanced, well thought comments don't bring much engagement so they end up being ignored by the algorithm while outrageously stupid takes generate a lot of (negative) engagement, some of which being equally stupid which will bring more engagement than the sensible responses and so on. And at the end if the day, all you see in your social media feed is stupid people sharing at least some of your values arguing with even stupider people (or so you think, at least) who have the opposite views.<p>This is obviously harmful for society but also obviously the best outcome for the platform who wants to sell your attention to advertisers.
Here's One Weird Trick™ to avoid being an ideologue: be ok with being wrong.<p>Flipping that over: aspire to be correct in your beliefs, not in "being right".<p>Karl Popper (the man behind the <i>Intolerance of Intolerance</i> "paradox) identified it: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability</a>
I only recently learned that most peoples beliefs are not "factual beliefs". Since most of mine are, I thought that's how other people work. I think Popper may have made the same mistake by assuming "correctness" is always the primary value a belief offers.<p>The other kind of beliefs are "Symbolic beliefs." Symbolic beliefs are not held because they are true, or because they are useful on their own. They're held because they signal that you belong to the tribe. They are similar to the "Alief", which is an automatic unequestioned belief. Most Symbolic beliefs are aliefs, but not all.<p>Since learning about this I've been trying to identify my own aliefs and symbolic beliefs and question them. It turns out I have more than I'd realized. We probably all do.
I like that the author doesn’t clarify what constitutes an extremist idea aside from suggesting that he doesn’t believe in any. “Extremism is when people, who are dumb, don’t know facts unlike me, who is very smart” is a kick ass theme for an essay
Read: "I did not even attempt to read the article"
"I’m not against extremist ideas on principle. I have my own, the main one being that animal welfare is a much larger urgent catastrophe than most people believe."
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His arguments would have more force if he didn’t use them to smuggle in his ridiculous vegan stuff.