Goodness - I'm sorry, I completely missed this reply to my post! My sincerest apologies for not responding more quickly; I am a goober.
As to the specific incident: it was during a very interesting discussion, which was moving rapidly toward becoming a very uninteresting argument, and then possibly into a REALLY interesting fist-fight. You know the drill - young men, all in the process of earning their various Master's Degrees in unrelated fields, encamped around alcohol, talking politics, getting heated, voices rising.
It had to do with racism. And the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, and how laws are changed. So this may not be the very best possible place for me to post all of this; please ignore or skip this note if it please you.
To set the stage: the question was put forth as to who, present at the time, had voted for Obama in 2008 - which was, in the majority opinion, a useless tangent away from the much more stimulating, ongoing discussion as to what Obama had and had not accomplished during his first term, what he might have accomplished given different political circumstances, whether those specific political circumstances (read as: rise of the Tea Party) were a foregone result of his election, what the President might or might not hope to accomplish if re-elected, the likelihood of such a reelection, and if we could reasonably expect the aforementioned political circumstances to change significantly during a theoretical Obama second-term.
We were moving toward analysis of voter apathy, I think, and the idea of an "energized block," and some talk about the odds of various scenarios. Things were getting heated. Body language was getting authoritative - fingers pointed, heads cocked, stare-downs, chests puffed out. Alpha-male posturing among intellectuals with political-science, law and philosophy backgrounds.
So the general consensus at the raising of this question (that is, who present had voted for him the last time) was a groan - this was in Illinois, in a college town, among young academics, educators & professional writers. OF COURSE, we all assumed, everyone present had voted for Obama. Whether we might choose to vote for him again, and why, and how excited we were to cast our particular vote in 2012, and what we might hope to gain from it, was a much more valuable topic of conversation. And clearly, the gentleman who raised the question meant to use this as a sort of unifier: "Okay, we obviously all voted for him last time," he meant to suggest, "so what's changed?"
But then one dude, a guy named ... uh, we'll call him "Mike" ... well, he went and said that he had voted for McCain.
After a moment to recalibrate ourselves, everyone present stopped to reassure everyone else of their total respect for Senator John McCain - no one there personally disliked or distrusted the man. No one here condemned McCain, no one hated him, no one thought he was a monster or a fraud or The Devil or anything like that. War hero, public servant, frequent guest on 'The Daily Show' - we hadn't voted for him, certainly, but that didn't mean we didn't LIKE him.
We just liked Obama better. Wanted him in office more than McCain. Wanted to vote for the first black president. Really got into the whole "Hope" thing. Didn't really dig on his choice of running mate, Governor Palin ... not that ANYONE there didn't respect her as a strong, capable, independent, 21st-century woman. We just didn't care for her specific policies.
But hell ... look, half the people in the room had met Obama - gone to a speech, shaken his hand, even worked for his campaign, going all the way back in 2004 when he was running for Senate. We wore the t-shirts, got out the vote, and threw a party during the inauguration. Some of us literally danced in the streets.
So it was a little unfathomable that someone in our peer-group had voted for McCain, of all people.
Finally, someone finally asked Mike the million-dollar question: "Why?"
There were a million answers that everyone present would have accepted, if not agreed with. A good example would be: "I'm from Arizona, I've met McCain; he's a good man. And, well, since Illinois was going to swing for Obama anyway, no matter what I did, I voted my heart."
His answer was ... different than that.
Mike said, and I quote as best I'm able: "The founding fathers never intended a black man to be president. It's in the constitution that it's illegal."
That seemed strange, coming from a man with a master's degree. Which I would like to note, Mike HAS.
When it was noted that the Constitution does not specifically prevent a black man from being president, Mike rebutted that it didn't really NEED to be spelled out - the founding fathers pretty obviously never intended a black man to be president. When asked to clarify, Mike explained that he could not vote for a black because it was morally wrong.
There was very nearly a scuffle.
But rather than see if anyone was able to knock Mike out, which at least one person there was willing to try, a friend attempted a different tactic.
He said, very simply, "You're right, but ..." - and the rest was history.
Rather than lecture Mike on why he was wrong - and I tend to believe that he was - my buddy was able to get Mike to explain his own cognitive error to HIM. By the end, not only was Mike able to explain to others why the original intent of a group of slave-owners was not infallible, but he was able to see how his view might have been construed as racist. He was even able to make a point about how interpreting both language AND intent are important, and that cultural mores change - often for the better.
And we also cleared up Mike's misconception that Lincoln had several illegitimate black children.
It was miraculous.
NOTE: yes, Mike has a Master's Degree.
"Meet people where they are" is a principle I've heard mentioned a few times. I wonder if this specific case is "Find something true that the other person believes, and build from there".
Like so many of my posts, this one starts with a personal anecdote.
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend was invited to a community event through Meetup.com. The purpose of the meetup was to watch the movie The Elegant Universe and follow up with a discussion. As it turns out, this particular meetup was run by a man who I’ll call ‘Charlie’, the leader of some local Ottawa group designed to help new immigrants to Canada find a social support net. Which, in my mind, is an excellent goal.
Charlie turned out to be a pretty neat guy, too: charismatic, funny, friendly, encouraging everyone to share his or her opinion. Criticizing or shutting out other people’s views was explicitly forbidden. It was a diverse group, as he obviously wanted it to be, and by the end everyone seemed to feel pretty comfortable.
My boyfriend, an extremely social being whose main goal in life is networking, was raving by the end about what a neat idea it was to start this kind of group, and how Charlie was a really cool guy. I was the one who should have had fun, since I’m about 100 times more interested in physics than he is, but I was fuming silently.
Why? Because, at various points in the evening, Charlie talked about his own interest in the paranormal and the spiritual, and the books he’d written about it. When we were discussing string theory and its extra dimensions, he made a comment, the gist of which was ‘if people’s souls go to other dimensions when they die, Grandma could be communicating with you right now from another dimension by tapping spoons.’
Final straw. I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything and tried not to show how irritated I was. Which is strange, because I’ve always been fairly tolerant, fairly agreeable, and very eager to please others. Which is why, when my brain responded ‘because he’s WRONG and I can’t call him out on it because of the no criticism rule!’ to the query of ‘why are you pissed off?’, I was a bit suspicious of that answer.
I do think that Charlie is wrong. I would have thought he was wrong a long time ago. But it wouldn’t have bothered me; I know that because I managed to attend various churches for years, even though I thought a lot of their beliefs were wrong, because it didn’t matter. They had certain goals in common with me, like wanting to make the world a better place, and there were certain things I could get out of being a community member, like incredibly peaceful experiences of bliss that would reset my always-high stress levels to zero and allow me to survive the rest of the week. Some of the sub-goals they had planned to make the world a better place, like converting people in Third World countries to Christianity, were ones that I thought were sub-optimal or even damaging. But overall, there were more goals we had in common than goals we didn’t have in common, and I could, I judged, accomplish those goals we had in common more effectively with them than on my own. And anyway, the church would still be there whether or not I went; if I did go, at least I could talk about stuff like physics with awe and joy (no faking required, thinking about physics does make me feel awe and joy), and increase some of the congregation’s scientific literacy a little bit.
Then I stopped going to church, and I started spending more time on Less Wrong, and if I were to try to go back, I’m worried it would be exactly the same as the community meetup. I would sit there fuming because they were wrong and it was socially unacceptable for me to tell them that.
I’m worried because I don’t think those feelings are the result of a clearheaded, logical value calculation. Yeah, churches and people who believe in the paranormal waste a lot of money and energy, which could be spent on really useful things otherwise. Yes, that could be a valid reason to reject them, to refuse to be their allies even if some of your goals are the same. But it’s not my true rejection. My true rejection is that them being wrong is too annoying for me to want to cooperate. Why? I haven’t changed my mind, really, about how much damage versus good I think churches do for the world.
I’m worried that the same process which normalized religion for me is now operating in the opposite direction. I’m worried that a lot of Less Wrong memes, ideas that show membership to the ‘rationalist’ or ‘skeptic’ cultures, such as atheism itself, or the idea that religion is bad for humanity...I’m worried that they’re sneaking into my head and becoming virulent, that I'm becoming an undiscriminating skeptic. Not because I’ve been presented with way more evidence for them, and updated on my beliefs (although I have updated on some beliefs based on things I read here), but because that agreeable, eager-to-please subset of my brains sees the Less Wrong community and wants to fit in. There’s a part of me that evaluates what I read, or hear people say, or find myself thinking, and imagines Eliezer’s response to it. And if that response is negative...ooh, mine had better be negative too.
And that’s not strategic, optimal, or rational. In fact, it’s preventing me from doing something that might otherwise be a goal for me: joining and volunteering and becoming active in a group that does good things for the Ottawa community. And this transformation has managed to happen without me even noticing, which is a bit scary. I’ve always thought of myself as someone who was aware of my own thoughts, but apparently not.
Anyone else have the same experience?