The stuff we keep beneath, then, is disproportionately likely to be the stuff we don’t want other people to see (at least not immediately). Herein lies our fears, our insecurities, our prejudices, and our perversions. It’s going to be things which are more likely to cause disagreement, to make people like us less.
There is a certain type of person who puts all their psycho-emotional prickles and saw-teeth and spikes and off shapes on the outside and wear them like armour. What they present is all the things they dislike about themselves and keep the things that they like inside.
I do not know how frequent this kind of person is compared to the general populace, but I do understand the state of their minds—or at least I can imagine that I do understand them, which is often a near enough approximation to be viable. For such a person being vulnerable looks different. When they open up they open up about things that they like about themselves. For such a person in such a situation the advice given here
This why I think it’s so important to bias towards cultivating a state of mind where you can be appreciative of other people opening up, even when it seems like the more you learn about them, the less there is the two of you have in common.
is so important. I have no data, anecdotal or otherwise, for which has a more negative effect on relationships. I imagine that rejecting the inner parts of someone that they are proud of yet scared to show has a greater detrimental effect than being taken aback by the things that someone is not proud of.
I am new to the website. So new that this is my first comment and I didn’t even particularly want to sign up. I found it interesting having just come from reading Eleizer’s post about 0 and 1 not being probabilities to here I immediately had a question form in my mind.
How certain of a thing do we have to be in order to prescribe that the state be able to end someone’s life for their speaking it?
There are several points in this question that require some unpacking. The most prominent being about the state being able to end someone’s life. Though people are generally self-seeking and somewhat rational in being so (so taking a prison sentence over engaging in a shootout with police), any action we ask the state to police is then done so with the threat that the state has total authority to use lethal force in the case of serious non-compliance. If we grant that the state has the right to put people in prison for an action, we grant that the state has the right to kill someone for refusing to comply with the states right to put them in prison.
So how certain of a thing do we have to be in order to grant the state the right to kill someone who questions it? Can any story told have a probability of 0 that every part of it is absolutely true in the telling?
In the example used here—specifically the Holocaust and laws against its denial—what quantitative value can we place on a political ideology that had just defeated the rival that existed with the singular aim of ensuring its extinction told no lies? What quantitative value can we place on a victorious military inventing no embellishments about the actions of its vanquished foe? What quantitative value can we place on the testimony of defeated soldiers rendered under torture having no falsehoods? What quantitative value can we place on the anecdotal evidence given at a series of trials that required no corroborating evidence?
As a burgeoning rationalist how can I accept that an event is so true it is illegal to question even one part of the telling thereof?