Knowing you were wrong

General Discussion
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The problem is we have great examples of where that absolutely doesn’t work. New Atheists flowing into modern Rationalists and journalists who pick science as their beat is a textbook example of where even what may be a genuine desire for elevated critical thinking turns into weird cults and anti-science screeds wrapped up as if they support science (with no more validity than climate change denial). It’s one of the oldest issues in the book for science itself: failure to account for our own biases creates a distorted understanding of everything and skews the data we gather. Phrenology, eugenics, early psychology (a field so great we had to put in place exhaustive ethics panels to prevent our hubris harming volunteers and producing invalid results at the same time). All of this is an ongoing process of trending towards fixing our mistakes (guess who still gets published most easily? Straight White men) but it’s also something that’s gone into fully blown toxicity on the fringes of academia and into the areas that feed on Dawkinism and similar.

When atheists decide they are suddenly some perfect rational machines and that what the world really needs is to adapt Nazi ideology to target a different minority religion (Islamophobia) then it absolutely needs to be pointed out that they have constructed a faith around hatred. When that same group are defending literal calls to implement the same eugenics arguments made 100 years ago to “purge the species of disability” then it cannot be left as if it was a reasonable discussion and a font of critical thinking. When journalists and TWEFs decide to ignore the body of science and weaponise transphobia via fringe studies and discredited scientists who abuse children then we must stand up and call out how science is being misused - that a blind faith in some inward rationality is being used to ignore a severe domain-specific knowledge deficit from the proponents of these ideas. These are extremely dark paths which many people may not even realise they are being led down by some fetishisation of a mythical human rationality combined with common societal biases and a few actively evil participants who have crossed lines in what they have decided is acceptable.

When it comes to people promoting eugenics, denying the very humanity of marginalised and oppressed populations then we absolutely have a duty to declare things wrong: morally, ideologically, and factually. That these abhorrent ideas have taken hold in communities claiming to be all about open debate and the pursuit of truth (via such things as evaluation of research, critical thinking, and asking for sources) serves as a major warning to us all that even good intentions cannot save us from the darkest paths through collective ignorance.

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I got so sick of those Facebook memes going round “Solve this problem: GENIUS LEVEL” and then it’s a simple arithmetic puzzle that I made one of those using Goldbach’s Conjecture, which actually was genius level. As far as I know nobody solved it…

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In most cases outside mathematics and formal logic it is relatively hard to know you were wrong except when it has been revealed by time - that one lottery ticket I was sure would win, well, it didn’t. Once it had happened there was no question.

Usually, though, the times that it matters, there probably won’t even be a definite answer. I’ve used the internet, so I’ve seen people argue pretty much every ass-backwards point of view you can imagine and a lot that you probably wouldn’t until you saw it right there. A lot of them have some kernel of maybe not-completely-wrong in a massive ocean of yes-completely-wrong. So for example, my friend didn’t really believe that male privilege was a thing, because he’s a white man and he tries to treat other people fairly. It was only after talking it through at length with other people who see it in action or have a more difficult life as a result that he started to grasp that it was a real thing and that whether or not he was conscious of it, he benefits from it. Looking back how, he would say he was wrong before because he now has more perspectives on it and understands it differently. In my experience talking something through with people who know about it is the most useful way of discovering you are wrong, but also it never becomes easy. You always held a belief or did a thing for what seemed to you a sufficiently good reason - even if that reason was no more than a habit of thinking - and getting yourself over the bump to let go of that is hard.

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i feel like a lot of the time people with bad opinions get off a little too easily actually

lot of sympathy for those who’ve had their personalities shaped by whoever they’re dependent on and / or surrounded by but there is also a line. looking at constant overwhelming awfulness and telling the people who live it “well there sure are some problems it’d be nice if someone fixed them” but also that this is ~as good as you get~ is, like, objectively awful, and i don’t believe they should be excused for just not being hashtag woke enough (hey kids, remember that people saying all the right things doesn’t always mean they believe them), because if you’re not capable of basic human sympathy then what are you even doing

i didn’t really start this post meaning to write a dang manifesto but: it’s really important to constantly expose yourself to new people and experiences (note: this does not mean “let fascists speak”; this means “shut up about things that other people live and listen to them instead”) and i don’t want to sound like i’m resting on my queen of wokeness laurels here but at the same time: there’s a baseline level of humanity that you should hopefully know you measure up to

everything else, to a greater or lesser degree, follows from there

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I understand the anger. I’ve done my fair share of yelling at people on Facebook for being ignorant or spreading lies, but in my experience meeting their hate filled lies with aggressive retorts no matter how factual, never results in them changing their minds and indeed it actually makes them dig in harder because I am meeting their anger with more anger and emotion gets involved which then causes them to bristle and defend their statement no matter what, or devolve it to name calling.

I have seen people on all sides abandon civilised discourse for name calling and refusing to even try and understand how the other side might have come to their opinions or beliefs.

I too have labeled others as awful human beings or ended friendships based on other’s opinions of a certain topic simply because I felt they were wrong, and because of our stubbornness neither side would try to understand the other.

Now I always try to remember a story Joe Biden told from when he was new on the Hill. He was told “you can question a man’s judgement, but never question his motives.”. Too often we assume we know why someone did something or feels a certain way, without bothering to actually ask them.

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It is just really goddamn easy to fall into an escalation cycle. You don’t give in and I won’t either. Complete descent into baseline beliefs. Nuance is lost. And when nuance is lost, so is everyone in the discussion. At some point you’re not talking with someone, you are fighting them with words.
It’s a ridiculous thing but endemic that through all our advances and knowledge we will find a way to devolve any encounter if it pushes us enough. The old joke of ‘what happens if the unstoppable force hits the immovable object’ comes to mind.
Frankly I have lost enough sleep trying to prove to people i shouldn’t have to prove anything to that me being trans doesn’t make me a "deviant"
It has become tiresome because, to answer the thread title question, when it concerns fundamental parts of my existence i do not know if I am at fault for not handling the conversation any better than I should. Understanding very likely never comes out of confrontation. And confrontation has been distilled in the internet age to be sharper, more frequent (due to the inpersonality of it all) and ultimately bereft of its visible consequences.
Living in an age where bubbles are formed around certain people and the propagation of misinformation makes this feel like, frankly, a complete nightmare of a headache.

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So here’s the thing: this is still that corrupted view that pushes civility and lack of emotions (note this is gendered, “you’re being/getting emotional” is a phrase used to perpetuate patriarchy as well as also being used in racist framings) as it if was somehow closer to a truth or has more inherent value and some secret path to rationality. This is the path down which people are told to “let the neo-Nazi speak”, totally ignoring that doing so denies the very humanity of many of those who “disagree” with neo-Nazis. That there are well-studied examples of how this is another tool that defends power imbalances.

Someone is not being civil when they deny my bodily autonomy, no matter how softly they speak that toxic idea. A lack of emotions around topics is a great indicator that someone is playing with a topic that doesn’t significantly affect them, they are not talking of something which is linked to constant microaggressions and larger oppressions. Something which they lack domain-specific understanding of because it is not a power vector that opposes their right to exist.

It is not my job to understand why someone else has decided they deserve to control my body and take that autonomy from me. That statement is already violence. That is one of the most aggressive things you can say, to assert ownership over someone else’s body; no matter how calm and friendly the tongue. This is not a case of needing mutual understanding. It is not a case where I need to just put up with his boot upon my neck for a bit longer while we all understand one another, to give up my own “stubbornness” so we can find somewhere to meet in the middle. Oppressors are raised to understand they simply have what is rightfully theirs, that this is the way of the world, that any benefit they may get from that continued oppression is actually earned and just.

I’m White; I benefit from systemic racism and the continued effects of historic racism; I will have absorbed a host of racist biases by growing up in a White supremacist society. But undoing that is my problem, one for which there are already bountiful tools to assist me. I can never become a domain expert because this is an oppression I will never truly understand (from the inside), but I can become less ignorant by reading and listening. But that cannot start until I am willing to begin. None of that process involves a person of colour needing to be more civil to me, to give up on any stubbornness, to understand me (as if being oppressed doesn’t quickly teach the mind of the oppressor), to never swear over the effect of that oppression for them. I am not owed their time or patience to ask questions or demand debate to spoon-feed me - in fact my desire to understand and do my own reading is critical to the process and builds upon the huge existing effort of those people of colour who have already written and spoken about this extensively.

It’s like the issue with middle class White cishet dudes (some even in academia, plenty who have regular columns) who are constantly talking about “SJWs/Lefties in their echo chambers”. What that says is that person is so privileged that they do not have to deal with daily microaggressions, with people attempting to deny their humanity on the regular, of publications endlessly attacking them. They don’t realise that simply living is a constant act of defiance and there is no chance of an echo chamber for the oppressed. That is a privilege only offered to the oppressors. It’s the same as a fetishisation of the idea of needing “debate”, meaning that privileged want to deny oppression without facing consequences for their views. Because for the privileged it’s just talk, it’s not actually a reflection of the daily power vectors they have to navigate to survive.

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To wrap that long post back to the original question and my initial response: how did I realise I was wrong?

Because I slowly unlearned my ignorance and became more aware of the White supremacist society I was living in and the long history of that oppression. We can never be sure I’ve got a perfect view of the complex & intersectional power dynamics involved in society (in fact I doubt anyone does) but I can be pretty certain that any talk of achieved equality/equity or “post racial society” is absurd. The mountain of evidence is undeniable and we only don’t see it more clearly because of the blinkers of bias we are fitted with growing up, the way our lives are better if we don’t consider how we benefit from systemic issues and a history of privilege.

And that required me to want to be less oppressive (a never-ending incremental process). Like, racism doesn’t harm me; it cost me basically nothing to be ignorant. It takes me wanting to start learning the domain-specific knowledge before anything can happen.

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My point is that what seems so self evident and obvious to you, may not be how others see the world or have experienced it. It is exactly when we allow emotions to control us, that the Neo Nazis gain power, because as we all know, there is nothing factual in their belief that one race deserves to be here or have more rights than any other.

Declaring that someone does not have the right to speak simply because they have a different view point, as radical as it may be, is 100% the problem. How we can claim to be all about equal rights and free speech, then turn around and say someone doesn’t deserve to speak because we don’t agree with what they believe only serves to increase tensions between people of differing views and does absolutely nothing to solve anything or prove them wrong. In fact, it only furthers their agenda because it paints those who seek to silence their voices as the oppressors.

Since joining this forum, I have at times felt that I am being told I don’t get to comment on things or share my views simply because my profile picture is a white man.

Yes, I don’t have the same experiences, none of us can know what any of us have gone through unless we talk about it and learn. I can no more help what color skin or gender I have or sexual orientation than any one else here, so forgive me if being told I my thoughts or opinions don’t matter because of who I am sounds more like the Neo Nazis and less like the Dalai Lama to me.

Getting back to the original post, being open to discourse and constantly reexamining our own beliefs in light of new evidence is the only way forward for civilization. Everyone, know matter how flawed their reasoning, believes they are right. We should help them discover that they are wrong by engaging with them and by upholding the ideals of a fair and just society instead of devolving into chaos and declaring war on each other.

I have family who voted differently than I did in this election, and I immediately labeled them as racist, masoginistic bigots who sold our children’s’ future for tax breaks and misguided hatred of immigrants. I was so confused and angry because this didn’t make sense based on who I thought they were before the election. Turns out, after a while had passed, that I had been wrong in my knee jerk reaction about WHY they voted for candidate X, and after listening to their reasons, which I think are still short sighted and wrong ultimately, I am now relieved because they aren’t flaming racists and white supremacists. In fact they felt that their voice had been ignored and saw the government as being corrupt.

I learned that I can’t assume motivations. Just like Joe says.

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I don’t mean to be rude so please don’t take this the wrong way.

From a generalized point of view I absolutely understand where you are coming from however the key point here might just be experience in marginalized spaces. I’m gonna be 28 soon and I have spent an exhaustive amount of time either debating, conversing or outright arguing with people of different viewpoints. Whether it be about my views on gender identity, sexuality, gender equality or race.
There was always a spectrum of open-mindedness. From people declaring I would go to hell to people who were just genuinely curious what my experiences are and such.
The issue, i believe as far my observations go, is that we are tired.
Years upon years of debate. Having to over and over defend our position as a marginalized people who really only want to be participants in society without marginalization is tiring.
At some point I personally would like us to all have a baseline understanding that the underlying issue is not who is right or wrong but that we all just would like to enjoy our lives without having to defend our existence, however mild or innocent the discussion may be.

I fully understand and agree that you cannot push progress by force into everyone’s head - that’s a paradox.
However I also understand why many are just really exhausted of having to retreat the same ground ad infinitum and as a result get annoyed or combative. A whole heap of issues grow from that frustration, really.

But this, I would like to very much empathize is something specific to an issue such as the one I mean but has applicability to any other issues where there is often times a divide. Us vs. Them breeds in such environments.

Ideal world scenario is that we can all consider every viewpoint and find ways to coexist without stepping on anyone’s toes but given a climate of mutual antagonism and just pure exhaustion (on any side mind you!) leads to the aforementioned frustration and the subsequent decline of an open minded discussion regardless of intentions.

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Yes I understand. I don’t claim to have any or all the answers, but just from my own life experiences, which I added some examples to my previous post, I find my emotions steered me wrong, and that if I had asked them and listened to them instead of getting angry and assuming motivations, I would have saved myself and my family alot of grief.

There is no doubt we are at a crossroads, and I believe we here are all on the side for equality for everyone and no discrimination, I just don’t think that meeting irrational hatred with violence or more anger will do much to help us in the end.

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This is absolutely correct and as long we keep trying to find the sources of said hatred we might find each other in a place where we can see the kinship in us all. That’s what I believe at least. However, admittedly I am a fairly weak person I tend to back away before meaningful progress can be made.

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Ah, well there’s the rub. Implicit in this is the assumption that people always approach discourse from this honest belief, and we know that this isn’t the case. So what this means is that the very act trying to meet this with civility plays right into their hands. They have literally no interest in whether their points hold up under scrutiny, their only goal is to sow disruption and discord. I read a lengthy quote about this recently that put it far better than I can, but I can’t seem to place my hand on it. Sorry if this seems to be a bit ‘assume motivationy’ but it has an awful amount of explanatory power for how extreme ideologies take hold.

But even if for some reason given the benefit of the doubt about their honesty, I fail to understand why it should be the onus of the oppressed to react with attempts to deny their humanity (sincere or not) with ‘civility’ - and historically, this approach has not worked out half as well as you think. Anger, though? Rebellion in the face of this? That has had some results.

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My point is and has been throughout this thread that some things are far easier to know are wrong, even if you can’t know you’re perfectly right. People thinking they’re right simply because they are insulated by wilful ignorance is very bad. When it is so easy (but a continual process) to disabuse oneself of some oppressive notions by doing research/gaining some domain-specific knowledge (seeing what is actually going on/listening/reading) then people who don’t need to change, not those they oppress. If someone will not directly benefit from becoming less ignorant then they may not feel compelled to do so - that is a privilege those they oppress often do not have.

Nazis don’t get platformed. The problem is anyone wishing to bring them a podium because of some warped idea of “debate”. Often that means it is because the person who would platform them is not the one whose life is being threatened. My denial of a fascist’s right to bring about an authoritarian state and eradicate me and many other oppressed groups is “100%” not the problem. If this forum sometimes doesn’t centre your opinions as the most important then you’re experiencing every day regarding every oppressed identity in most settings - this is why we must build these safer spaces where marginalised voices can be centred (it’s not silencing you, it’s reversing the silencing we are complicit in elsewhere). Becoming defensive about privilege and actually comparing being told that you’re in multiple oppressor classes (as am I) to Nazism is not a good look. Try to focus on our shared status as White oppressor - this is where I’m speaking to our commonality.

You may have been born White by happenstance (same as me) but that privilege, that history of oppression and continued oppression that benefits us is something we are responsible for dismantling. If you’re born holding a gun pointing at someone else then that’s just chance. If you don’t work to put that gun down then that’s a choice you are making. My and your thoughts and opinions about racism absolutely don’t matter as much as a person of colour who lives under that oppression. There is nothing “neo-Nazi rather than Dalai Lama” about that statement.

Oppressed groups will directly face increased harm at the hands of an incompetent racist queephobic misogynist tyrant and his lieutenants. The complex soup of motivations and justifications for those who enabled a corrupt billionaire establishment tyrant are less important than the above - that the first step must be the oppressors’ willingness to learn. This is what it means to be an oppressor (as almost all of us are in relation to at least some power vectors): our ignorance primarily harms others, not ourselves. Which is why the first step must be our willingness to learn.

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I’m saying, that I learned that many of those who voted for him did so precisely because they have been made out to be monsters and told that they are privileged and that their opinions don’t matter because they are white or because they are men or because they are Republicans and only care about money. They felt like they were coming under attack for simply being born the same color as the oppressors, and so they voted for who made them feel the safest.

Yes, you and I can see how flawed and ignorant that stance is, but they only knew their own life experiences and acted on those. Should they have sought out truth in our protests? Yes. Should they have thought about how unqualified he is? Yes. But don’t assume that they all voted for him because they are white supremacists. Plenty of non white people voted for him as well.

We can’t abandon our morality because it is tiresome. Go out and try to understand why people believe what they do, then we can work to educate them and show them where their logic doesn’t hold up.

Being a parent changed my perspective. If I don’t take the time to explain my reasoning, and to understand theirs we just end up yelling at each other. We have to remember that we are all humans, and even if you aren’t religious, the guiding tenant that we should treat others as we wish to be treated to me seems like the easiest and most true morality to hold.

Again, I totally understand where the anger comes from, but I don’t think that anyone deserves to be told their opinions don’t matter. I’m not telling you that your opinion doesn’t matter, I am just relating to you my experience dealing with children who are largely guided by emotion and how I have found far more success speaking to them and listening to their thoughts and feelings as opposed to shouting at them and threatening violence or punishment.

I am constantly thinking about the things I tell my children, and how I should be practicing what I preach. It is when my children feel like they are not being understood or when they can’t express themselves that they become most angry and violent, so giving everyone an avenue to speak and be heard, and for their ideas to be addressed and discussed in a logical manner is a core tenant to what I think it means to be a fair society.

From the Trump supporters I have talked to, they felt as though their voices were not being heard. Simple as that. When I look at your statements about how some people don’t deserve to have a place to speak freely, I can’t help but say they might be partly right in their feelings of being ignored or of being unfairly labeled as a whole. So I think that when I look at my own actions on social media, where I was calling people out for being wrong rather than trying to help them discover they were wrong through a calm examination of the evidence that made them come to their conclusions, I’d say if I’m being honest that I wasn’t helping bridge the divide between us and in fact I was further entrenching them and myself on our sides because it had become a fight and not a discussion.

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I don’t trust this because

  1. I mean they’re not really helping their ‘not a monster’ case here are they?
  2. Over on another thread you claimed that people were portraying you as a monster based on a pretty mildly pointed response someone made. So I’m not sure you are showing particularly good judgement about who is under attack here.

Finally, privilege isn’t a dirty word. It’s a fact of how society is constructed right now. People can be aware of it or not. Having it doesn’t make someone terrible automatically (and I don’t think anyone is actually claiming that) but failing to acknowledge it can certainly lead to a distorted idea of what fairness looks like.

Like when you imply that it’s not fair when people say maybe you should talk less and listen more when discussing minority issues. Do you understand how tired people are with straight white male voices on issues that affect them? How half the time people only take notice if a straight white male famous guy stands up to defend them? It doesn’t mean you can’t contribute, but just… know when you are not helping. Listen when people tell you that and don’t take it personally, just learn.

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  1. from what I have heard, from actually listening to them, they hoped he would shake up things and reverse what they saw as entrenched political corruption. Turns out so far he doesn’t seem to have lived up to that hope and promise, but in that case they were a victim of lies and made a mistake in trusting him. Hardly something they should be labeled as monsters over.

  2. here I am, speaking from my heart saying I feel like because I am a white male, I feel like my opinions and ideas are not taken seriously or as having any merit, and you go and say exactly that, and go on to say that people telling me I don’t get to have an opinion or speak about a subject because I don’t embody it is justified in your mind. I am opening up and saying that because I am white man, people assume what my motivations are and tell me I don’t get to have an opinion, where if my profile pic wasn’t a white man, I’d get listened to. Does no one else see the problem with this?

This was a post about how to know if you are wrong, and my opinion that we should listen to everyone’s ideas and address them logically was met with surprising opposition.

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I cannot recommend enough Kathryn Schultz’s Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error. I’d put it right up with The Drunkard’s Walk and Thinking Fast and Slow as formative works on how to understand the world and the people in it. It doesn’t directly answer OP’s question of how we can know if we’re right, but it does answer why people are so, so reluctant to admit they’re wrong.

It kicks off from the point that the feeling of Being Right is one of the simplest, most accessible, most unimpeachable pleasures a person can have. People will revel in being right even when the outcome is bad (“I told you we’ve been walking the wrong way for 15 minutes!”). Being wrong is associated with shame, stupidity, ignorance and immorality. “Rightness” is a feeling our mind will perform impressive gymnastic feats to protect, to the point that we will hold two completely contradictory beliefs in our head at the same time, rather than admit that they can’t both be true.

To paraphrase, we have powerful social, psychological and practical reasons to think that what we believe is true. But we, individually, don’t think that these social, psychological and practical reasons contribute to why we believe something. We, individually, think something is true “Cuz It’s True.”

I believe that Ocarina of Time is the best game ever made. But when I’m arguing with someone about it, I’m not going to say that the reason I think it’s the best game ever is because I was playing it when I met my future wife, and one of the first things we did together was start over and play through it together. That obviously has nothing to do with why Ocarina is better than any other game, so it just as obviously has nothing to do with why I believe Ocarina is better than any other game. But if it were someone else, I would say “of course that’s influencing why you think it’s the best game ever.” {Yes, it’s not really “wrong” when it’s something this subjective, but it still illustrates how we’ll discount obvious external factors influencing our beliefs.} To borrow a quote that Schultz borrows from Ward Jones:

It simply does not make sense to see myself as both believing that [something] is true and being convinced that I do so for reasons having nothing to do with whether [that thing] is true.

Therefore, anyone who doesn’t believe as we believe either: doesn’t have the facts, is too dumb to understand the facts, or is willfully ignoring the facts.

The point isn’t whether or not we are correct in any specific instance, the point is that it doesn’t matter. This is our default position for any specifically held belief.

It can actually be pretty dispiriting to read at times. Being wrong, and refusing to budge from that position, can have disastrous consequences for yourself and others. It’s heartbreaking to read about people who have been wrongfully convicted based on the testimony of the victim, both from the standpoint of the wrongfully accused, but also from the standpoint of the victim, who 100% believes they have properly identified the culprit. Having that belief proven wrong can be pretty shattering. And there’s no easy answer on how to get someone to stop believing something that’s wrong. Just look at the current Seth Rich conspiracy theorists, who take every new piece of information that should, logically, dispel their theory and twist it into “proof” of a cover-up.

The book does, however, end on a relatively positive note, and that’s that if we want to do something about this, it’s actually pretty simple. We just have to admit that we’re wrong about being wrong. Recognizing and admitting error can actually feel great. It can be really funny! If we’re never wrong, we can never be pleasantly surprised. Artists intentionally depict a “wrong” world in order to reveal a more fundamental truth. Being wrong is a fundamental part of the scientific process. Error isn’t just inevitable, it’s essential. We have to stop acting like admitting we are wrong is the worst thing in the world.

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I strongly recommend digging into the history of 1930s Germany and how normalisation via discussion of all ideas has worked out in the past. You will quickly come to be less surprised at why people oppose platforming neo-Nazis and other eugenicists.

This is far from a singular event so any other good history of oppressed groups will provide similar insights but the history of how fascism grows and corrupts inside the scaffolding of a democracy is highly relevant and informative (and also written about extensively).

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I have a son and a daughter and two more on the way. I am straight, but they might not be, and I have no problem with that and want the world to be fair to them and for them to be treated fairly no matter their orientation as I will treat them. So for someone to say that I don’t get to talk about these things is deeply personal and quite honestly insanely frustrating especially since I adamantly support minority rights and equal treatment, but any attempts at speaking about these issues are met with severe opposition only based on my personal orientation or life experiences, or frankly what others assume my life experiences are just based on me being a white straight male.

So it is extremely ironic that people who have spent their entire life being marginalised would then turn around and do the same to someone they perceive as being different than themselves.