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by mockingbirdy
2895 days ago
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> because they will be actively resisted for precisely that. Then your response has to be to adapt. Wrap some emotional frame around your reasoning and people will listen to your position because you speak their language. This doesn't help in the greater picture, but can help in individual interactions with anti-intellectual people. - - - > People revert to relying on intuition if for no other reason than it is easier and no longer bears many negative consequences. I like the analysis. Pretty dark, but I agree with it. The fragility of civilization is often attributed to the interconnectedness and interdependencies, but the psychological implications are often overlooked. Although I have to disagree with some parts: I don't think it's just a battle between intuition and reasoning that is the root cause for annihilation of social progress. Intellectualism and anti-intellectualism both produced horrible and positive things in the past. I don't think that both approaches are entirely right and that every generation has to find a dualistic point of view which combines intuition and reasoning into a framework that deals with emotions but also solves problems rationally. I've got the feeling that you see intuition and emotional aspects as entirely negative (Mao, unvaccinated children, killing each other over whose god is stronger, ...). |
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This is the problem... a person who values reason would see that 'emotional frame' as the most disgusting, base, unethical kind of manipulation. Sure, you could violate everything you believe and coerce people by manipulating them emotionally... but if others figure out what you are doing, they will realize you as a hypocrite and be even less likely to consider your viewpoint.
>Pretty dark, but I agree with it.
Oh, I left out the dark parts. The dark parts come when you start asking yourself 'how can we fix or avoid this problem?' I've been considering the problem for many years, and the only ideas I have ever been able to think of are stupendously unethical and would debase whatever society used them.
>I've got the feeling that you see intuition and emotional aspects as entirely negative (Mao, unvaccinated children, killing each other over whose god is stronger, ...).
I do not, actually. Emotion and intuition are important parts of human life, and an integrated view is key. We even have support for this in biology. There are people (maybe just one person, I can only recall reading about one case) who have a lesion in a very specific part of the brain which essentially destroys their ability to experience emotion. One of the surprising things found was that this also affected their ability to reason. Specifically, they could consider an argument and produce a list of 'pros' and 'cons' for choices, but no matter how lopsided the lists are, they're incapable of deciding upon a course of action. Utterly and completely incapable of making the leap from argument to decision. So you simply can't function without emotion coming in to play.
The reason intellectualism is the right path (and by that I mean relying on reason and science in situations where the matters are important) is that it can integrate all of this, it can recognize its own shortcomings, and it can formulate ways of dealing with them. All of the tragedies of the past can usually be traced back to someone (or groups) who had all of the tools available to them which could have said "you do not have the evidence to support your conclusion", but they let other motivations sway them from rigor. Total rigor is impossible, of course. We will always have limited information. Acknowledging this, and being circumspect and conservative in our actions, building in the ability to turn back, is something only intellectualism can do.
I do not and would not advocate a 'Vulcan' emotionless outlook. We are human, and we have emotion. It's not inherently destructive. However, our emotional capacity is an outgrowth of the functioning of our brain which evolved to keep us alive (just) while living in small tightknit tribes on the African savannah. It did not adapt to function in anything like the environments in which we find ourselves today. As such, it is often misleading. The silver lining is that whether it is or is not misleading is something that reason can determine. If our emotional responses are consistent with reality, great, reason will verify that and give us confidence. If not, reason can enable us to correct ourselves. As emotion is a trained response, enough repeated correction results in this not always being a 'battle'.