Don Geddis left a comment on my last post. My reply grew far longer than would reasonably fit into a comment reply so I decided to post it as an article. Don wrote:
I wonder if you've considered that perhaps you have more in common with the people who frustrate you, than your current self-image suggests.
My reply:
I've not just considered it, I will happily concede that I am not as rational as I fancy myself to be. In my case, I would prefer to put a slightly different spin on it and say that I am not as rational as I would like to be, or as I try to be, but whatever. I'm a fallible human, just like everyone else. (Duh!) I make mistakes, and one of the mistakes I've made on more than one occasion is to be overly confident in my own abilities. The best I can say about myself (or at least could until recently) is that I try. I try to recognize when I make mistakes. I try to learn from them. I try to improve.
The failure I'm referring to in this post is not that I've failed to be sufficiently rational, or even that I've failed to persuade others to become more rational. I only mentioned that to put my gloomy assessment of the situation into context. My failure is that I reached the limits of my willingness to try. I've had arguments with Protestants and Catholics and Muslims and Witnesses and Mormons and YECs and lunar landing denialists and even Republicans. (I've never had the pleasure of interacting directly with a flat-earther, but if there are any among my audience who would be willing to engage I'd welcome the opportunity.) The vast majority of these discussions have been civil and constructive. I've learned a lot, and found a surprising amount of common ground. I can steel-man just about any position (even yours, I'll bet). In a not-insignificant number of cases I've ended up becoming friends with my interlocutor (at least for a while). I even managed to make peace with Erik Naggum once (at least for a while). That is one of my proudest achievements. I figured if I could have a civil discussion with him and find common ground, I could do it with anyone.
I was wrong. I tried really hard with Publius for a very long time, but the claim that Kamala Harris was never a prosecutor was such a brazen falsehood that it took me by surprise, and left me to face two of the most difficult choices of my life. The first was whether to publish the claim and its accompanying screed. Do I contribute to the promulgation of falsehoods, or do I sign on to cancel culture and become a censor? Neither of these options is appealing. Both run deeply counter to my moral intuitions. It's not even clear to me which is the lesser of the two evils. I ultimately chose the former, not because I had a good argument for it, but just because I didn't want to face the second choice: if I published Publius's comments, should I respond to them, and if so, how?
The reason this second choice was so difficult is that responding to Publius takes a lot of effort. It can be mentally exhausting. He's not stupid. If I make a mistake, I can be pretty sure he'll call me out on it. (See for example our recent exchange about the Chinese Room.) So I can't phone it in. I have to think and do research and keep track of a zillion different points (because Publius is a master of the Gish Gallop). It takes time and mental energy, both of which I have in increasingly short supply these days. So responding to Publius has a cost. On the other hand, not responding has a cost too. If I publish his comments and don't reply, someone might come away with the impression that I think his claim might have some merit, and that's not a good outcome for me either.
I agonized over this for nearly two months hoping that some other alternative would present itself, but none did. So I decided to do what I did. I don't regret it, but I'm not proud of it either. I find it a little harder to look at myself in the mirror now than I did before. Before I could say that, yeah, I'm far from being perfectly rational, but I'm willing to listen to anyone and try my best to understand their position. I can't say that any more.
But I can still say it about you, Don. I've never censored you, and you have never said anything that would make me even consider it. Your silence here is self-imposed. Any time you feel like breaking that silence, either in public or privately, I'm ready and willing to listen to you, and that has always been the case.
To address your final paragraph: I understand, from this post, that you were focusing on "the limits of your willingness to try", which is fine. I agree that my silence is self-imposed, and you have not censored me.
ReplyDelete(I was instead responding only to the part of your previous post that I quoted, which was "when I've tried to point this out to them they get defensive and tribal ... they react like any other human would when their core beliefs are challenged." But perhaps that was merely a side comment to your intended main point about limits on "willingness to try".)
Yes, it was just a side-comment, intended merely to help people understand the context of why such a trivial-seeming thing as an anonymous troll making a ridiculous claim would drive me to existential despair. But to address your point directly nonetheless: I'd be lying if I said that I didn't have you in mind at all when I chose the word "defensive", but you were not foremost in my mind. You would probably not even make my top-ten list of examples.
DeleteYou did not address my point "directly" ... since the comment I made was about your behavior, but here instead you've turned it around to only make your own comment about your impression of my behavior. My behavior wasn't the subject under discussion. Your behavior was.
DeleteYou're right. I have no idea where my head was at when I wrote "to address your point directly..." Let me try again: yes, I've considered the possibility that I am occasionally irrational, and that when someone points this out to me, I sometimes (often?) get defensive. But I'm going to deny "tribal". To be tribal you have to be a member of a tribe, and I don't think I am, or ever was. I've never been a "team player" or willing to compromise my principles for the sake of the party. So I'll happily (well, not happily, but readily) confess to irrational and defensive, but not tribal. I have always chosen principle over party, or at least tried to. (One of the reasons this Publius thing has hit me so hard is that it has led me to abandon one of my most deeply held principles.)
DeleteWell ... I was thinking of a specific, concrete example (on tribe vs. principles). But my larger point was that perhaps you are not the most objective judge of your own behavior. (None of us have perfect introspection, and minds are very good at self-delusion.)
DeleteIn particular, your description (in the previous post) of your interaction with Publius causes me to notice a very strong analogy, namely Ron:Publius = Don:Ron. I bet Publius would disagree with your description of him (as you are disagreeing here). The way I feel about my interactions with you, is remarkably similar to the way you describe feeling about your interactions with Publius.
All that said, I appreciate that this latest comment was responsive to the point I made (in my comment on the previous post). So thank you for that.
> I was thinking of a specific, concrete example (on tribe vs. principles).
DeleteYes, I know.
> Ron:Publius = Don:Ron
Yes, I can see that. But I don't think I ever made a claim that was as transparently indefensible as "Harris was never a prosecutor", and I also don't think I have anywhere near as long a history of deploying logical fallacies as Publius. I can't recall having any intractable disagreements with you before our falling-out, whereas Publius and I were continually at loggerheads for years and years. I also don't think that you and I fell out over a dispute over facts, but rather over a prediction that you made that I thought was wrong, and a value judgement that I made as a result that you thought was wrong (to put it mildly). So no, I don't think the two situations are comparable except in their outcomes.
Now, I'm pretty sure you won't agree with this. The reason I'm pretty sure is because I remember you accusing me of a much longer list of sins back in the day, and I never defended myself against them, nor did I repent. And it's not unreasonable for you to conclude that the reason I didn't defend myself is that I didn't have a defense. And I can see how, under those circumstances, my failure to repent might look like intransigence, and you would find this frustrating. I get it. If I were in your shoes I'm not sure I would have reacted any differently. The only thing I'd ask at this point is for you to consider the possibility that there might have been some other reason that I neither defended myself nor repented. Do you really think I'm the kind of person would torpedo a friendship just to avoid admitting that I was wrong about something?
But... do you really want to revisit this? I'm willing to do it if you want, but I'm also willing to just consider it water under the bridge.