= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
rwallace comments on Open Thread: October 2009 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (425)
What's inexplicable about it? We all turn at least somewhat irrational whenever stuff about -isms comes up. It's human nature. Politics is the mind killer and all. That's why discussion of contemporary politics is discouraged here, or at least was last I heard.
Okay, perhaps I'm seen as explicably losing my mind. That's not a whole lot better. I don't like to have conversations with people who start out presuming me insane, even if they have a lovely narrative about exactly how it happened.
You're entitled to your emotional reactions, up to and including stonewalling unfavored commenters, but I see this behavior as a blatant self-defense mechanism for your beliefs. Likewise a theist could reject LW's arguments for atheism because oooh those evil people say I'm crazy and it's making me uncomfortable.
I don't think I'd characterize calling one's interlocutor crazy as "evil" so much as "mean". I wouldn't expect my theist friends to want to talk to me - about anything, really, much less religion - if I started out presuming them insane because they disagree with me! For the same reason, I don't blame the theists I know from steering clear of this site. It's a hostile environment for them, and they have no reason to enter any hostile environment, including this one. Similarly, I have precious little interest in having nonessential exchanges with or near people who have announced their intention to be mean to me. Calling it a "self-defense mechanism" looks like you think I need some reason to refrain from having conversations with or around you and those who agree with you, apart from predicting that they'll be unfun.
Indeed, categorizing one's enemies as "insane" seems like a bad epistemic move - a bit closer to deciding they're evil mutants.