Yeah, the frustrating part is almost always on a meta level. I think Zack’s point about “No natural units of pie” applies to the gaslighting issue as well though. Asserting one’s viewpoint means asserting it as truth which invalidates differing perspectives. “I disagree, you contradict, he gaslights”.
It’s difficult because sometimes the gas lights really don’t seem to be dimming, and sometimes that perception is downstream of some motivated thinking because I really don’t want to believe we’re running out of oil already, dammit. And so the result is simultaneously kinda an honest statement of perspective (at least, as honest as these tend to get) while also being a (not-necessarily-consciously) motivated action pushing people to disregard their own senses. And then we have to decide how to judge this mess of bias and honesty, and if we don’t judge such that the product after a round trip of perceiving C/D and responding accordingly we get more C than last time… shit’s fucked. And without objective units of pie that people can agree on when judging who was in the wrong.
So like… am I trying to gaslight people into questioning their own sanity so they accept what I want them to accept, or am I just flinching away from what scares me, like we all do? Both, and the question of whether I deserve the leniency and empathy is a difficult one, because what are the units of this pie and where’s the objective cutoff? And because our tolerance for further bullshit tends to diminish after accumulating bullshit, so it gets even more difficult to get back to the other side of criticality.
Yeah, the frustrating part is almost always on a meta level. I think Zack’s point about “No natural units of pie” applies to the gaslighting issue as well though. Asserting one’s viewpoint means asserting it as truth which invalidates differing perspectives. “I disagree, you contradict, he gaslights”.
It’s difficult because sometimes the gas lights really don’t seem to be dimming, and sometimes that perception is downstream of some motivated thinking because I really don’t want to believe we’re running out of oil already, dammit. And so the result is simultaneously kinda an honest statement of perspective (at least, as honest as these tend to get) while also being a (not-necessarily-consciously) motivated action pushing people to disregard their own senses. And then we have to decide how to judge this mess of bias and honesty, and if we don’t judge such that the product after a round trip of perceiving C/D and responding accordingly we get more C than last time… shit’s fucked. And without objective units of pie that people can agree on when judging who was in the wrong.
So like… am I trying to gaslight people into questioning their own sanity so they accept what I want them to accept, or am I just flinching away from what scares me, like we all do? Both, and the question of whether I deserve the leniency and empathy is a difficult one, because what are the units of this pie and where’s the objective cutoff? And because our tolerance for further bullshit tends to diminish after accumulating bullshit, so it gets even more difficult to get back to the other side of criticality.