Now, it is said we all here pride ourselves on our intelligence, rationality, and moral sense. It is also said, however, that we are a fiercely independent bunch, and that we can let this pride of ours get the better of us. There have also been comments that the live communities that appear at meetups provide much more positive interactions than what goes on on this site's discussions; this might merit further investigation.
My point is; we've done a lot of research on how to do proper ethical and metaethical calculations, and on how to achieve self-empowerment and deal with our own akrasia, which is awesome. We've also done some work on matters of gender equality, which is very positive as well. But I haven't seen us do anything about the basic details of human interaction, what one would call "politeness" and "basic human decency". And I think it might be useful if we started tackling these, for our own sakes, that of those who surround us, and that of easing our mission along, which is, as I understand it so far, to save the world (from existential risk (at the hands of (unfriendly and self-modifying) artificial intelligence))).
What inspired me to propose this post was a video I just saw from Hank Green of the famed and fabled vlogbrothers. I hold these two individuals in very high esteem, and I would expect many here to share my feelings about them, on account of their values and sensibilities largely overlapping with ours; namely the sense that intelligence, knowledge and curiosity are awesome, and that intellectuals ought to use their power to help improve themselves and the world around them.
Here it is; I hope you enjoy it
I guess he would. Well, at least if the complaining person was a woman, or black, or disabled, or homosexual, or whatever. He would probably not stop using the word "racist", but he would be more careful to use it in a way that makes obvious that the word applies only to white straight males.
Ok, I was joking here, but here is a thing that really happened on a feminist blog: There was a discussion about trans people. All people were super politically correct, except for one person who repeatedly asserted that trans people are against the nature, because the Spirit of Nature told her so. When other people finally attacked that as cis-ism (or how exactly they call that), the person defended by saying that she was a Native American, and those were her Native American beliefs; and that the people who offended her beliefs should check their privileges and apologize. And... however incredibly that felt to me... they really apologized. I was completely shocked. So yes, this kind of behavior really is possible. It might not make sense to you or me, but it exists.