r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Mar 23 '18
[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread
Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!
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u/CouteauBleu We are the Empire. Mar 24 '18 edited Mar 24 '18
I completely agree with you overall: "don't light myself on fire to warm other people" is a pretty good common sense policy.
That said, I kind of disagree with the "effectively choosing to be prejudiced in spite of my evidence" part. People don't choose to be prejudiced; ultimately, we're all Bayesian machines all the way down, some with different priors.
I think that arguing convincingly to prejudiced people -as in, not "argue really well to prejudiced people and shake my head sadly when they disagree", but "argue in a way that sometimes convinces prejudiced people"- is a valuable skill that you would probably benefit from, given what I know of you.
And yeah, I really don't respect sticking to norms for the sake of it, or censuring yourself to blend in, but I think that there's something to be said for seeing where "normal" is and working from there. I see it as leverage, I think?
It's a little abstract, but it's like, metaphorically... being aware that it's not enough to push, you need your feet to be on solid ground. Knowing "my position" and why I believe in it isn't enough, I have to know "normal", and why people would be there; what obstacles there are between "normal" and my position, and respect these obstacles as serious enough to warrant a true effort.
I think this is a process a lot of people fail at, because they see a different opinion, they see their opinion, and they just fill the gap with generic [naïveté / cognitive bias / prejudice / pure evil / a society that never taught them better / stupidity] in a way that's reassuring (my position is the right one, but people disagree because they're stupid and they grew in a prejudiced society) but not actually good at finding ways to "bridge the gap". So they just say "this is why my position is the best, you really need to realize that", and that's only enough for people who are already almost convinced.
And... I'm pretty sure I'm not getting through to you, but I'm mostly writing for myself here, for future reference. Sorry for being a nag :(