A skeptic wrote a taking-stock how-can-we-improve post soliciting suggestions on how to make a better skeptical “movement.” Suggestions and advice came in. One piece of advice was:
Treat your allies better than you treat your opposition. This doesn’t mean anyone who claims to be on your side gets a blank check. It does mean you should keep their intentions and goals in mind when someone is imperfect.
I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I laughed some more.
Update Ok I thought it was obvious what was so funny but it’s not; sorry.
Reasonable people – which self-proclaimed skeptics are a subset of – are not supposed to treat allies well and the opposition badly. That’s neither ethical nor epistemically sensible.
(Actual war is the exception here, but then that’s what makes war such a shitty thing, isn’t it.)
Saying you should “keep their intentions and goals in mind when someone is imperfect” about “your side” only is simply to embrace the fundamental attribution error in a permanent bear-hug. It’s groupthink elevated to a principle. It’s cognitive dissonance treated as a tool rather than a distortion.
Not very useful advice when you’re dealing with…
“I declare myself your ally, so you must treat me as I expect, and give me what I want!”
Oh dear, nobody is seeing the joke that I see.
How to make the skeptic movement better: accept people as allies who aren’t even curious as to whether their actions are actually helpful and, if they turn out to be harmful, give them a pass because the really important things is that self-appointed allies don’t ever actually have to change their behavior.
No, not getting it. I hate missing the joke so maybe someone will explain to me.
Ok I’ll update the post.
Ah, OK I did kind of think that was what was wrong about the suggestion but didn’t see it as so obvious as to be funny.
Surely reasonable people treat everyone in a reasonable way. Surely that is ethical and epistemically sensible. The allies of reasonable people are other reasonable people. They will welcome being treated in a reasonable way. The opponents of reasonable people are- by definition- unreasonable people and so are likely to think they are treated badly when they are treated in a reasonable way.
The problem, of course, is determining just who are reasonable people and just what is a reasonable way…
@ 7
If you’re going to misrepresent a statement, you’re probably better off not quoting it. Kind of ruins the effect.
sc_text@7:
The world isn’t split into just “reasonable people” and “unreasonable people.” If you think that way, and you think of yourself as reasonable, then the tendency will be to think that everyone who disagrees with you must be unreasonable. Because of this, a concept of how to treat others that uses “allies” and “enemies” is fundamentally flawed. Better to stick with your first thought and treat everyone with the same skeptical eye. That’s difficult enough.
Wait wait wait –
You’re kidding, right?
It’s possible to disagree with people on any number of subjects. There can be reasonable people on both sides. Assuming one’s own side is the reasonable one by definition is the very short road to Total Cognitive Failure.
When it comes to “reasonable people” and “unreasonable people”, as neither Abe Lincoln nor Bob Dylan said:
All of the people are unreasonable some of the time, and some of the people are unreasonable all the time, but none of the people are reasonable all the time.
And don’t get me wrong here – I’m not claiming I’m any good at following these rules I’m pointing out. I’m not claiming it’s always easy to see opponents in an argument as reasonable. I’m just saying that assuming one’s own team naturally lines up with the party of Reason is a reeeeally bad idea.
matty @ 6 – well it was the fact that it was a self-styled skeptic saying it on a thread for advice on how to do better skeptic was part of what made it so funny to me.
Honestly, the blog posts on You Are Not So Smart should probably be required reading for everyone who wants to be part of the skeptic movement. The initial focus really should be on addressing ones own internal biases before addressing those of others, “motes” and “planks” and all that.
Ophelia @10:
Which makes it pretty hard to divide the world into “skeptics” and their “opponents.” Especially since the preferred definition within the movement seems to be something along the lines of “people who believe in critical thinking and base their opinions on reason,” which practically everyone thinks applies to them. I mean, I guess there’s a few “other ways of knowing” types out there, but they’re pretty rare. Even Deepak Chopra likes to claim he has evidence to support his views, and tries to wrap his arguments in a layer of pseudoscientific babble to legitimize them.
If Jenny McCarthy is part of the “opposition” because she rejects the scientific evidence on vaccination, why isn’t Penn Jillette part of the opposition because he rejects the scientific evidence on climate change? (Or at least did so for a long while; perhaps he’s updated his views. Last I heard, he had “evolved” to the point of saying “well, maybe it’s true, I just don’t know, but damnit, I really really really hate Al Gore!”)
Why is McCarthy an object of derision and mockery, but Jillette gets at worst the “well, everybody’s wrong about something” special pleading?
I can only think of two reasons. The first is the plain old in-group, out-group reasoning that the OP criticizes. The second is the perception that climate change isn’t a “skeptical issue,” so it somehow doesn’t count — you know, the same way that religious beliefs get a pass from many self-declared skeptics.
I’ve been going on and on and on about this for a pretty long while now. Behaving in an ethical way is about YOUR behavior, not the behavior of other people. It is determining how you should treat other people in a general sense, lines that you shouldn’t cross and words/actions that make you a shitty person. Ethics is NOT about choosing which people you should behave reasonably towards, and deciding what a person can do that allows you to toss your ethics out the window. It can’t be called ethics if it is “death threats are wrong EXCEPT when I really really don’t like someone.”
Circle the wagons! Us against them! Anyone on our side is automatically above criticism – that would only weaken our side!!
Christians have been teaching us these lessons for centuries. Has this tactic worked well for them? Do people respect Christians who give a pass to other Christians behaving badly (snake-handlers/poison-drinkers, Westboro Baptist, televangelists, faith healers, megawealthy megachurch ministers)? How ’bout Muslims who refuse to criticize Muslim extremists? That working for them?
What Joe said. Exactly.
I like richardelguru’s anser the best so far.
I think the best way to think about it is that people will be differently reasonable on different subjects despite wanting to be reasonable on everything. When people are unreasonable the difference is due to familiarity with the subject, emotional value of the subject, and personal history with the subject in terms of good or bad experiences. In my opinion reasonable people are able to deal with familiarity, personal value, and personal experience fairly.
I agree, OB. It’s also a very easy idea as the people who assumed I agreed with it because I put it forward show.
I don’t think it’s funny, I think it’s unethical. Also extremely common.
This reminds me of the term “social justice warrior”, for some reason.
Because nearly everything their opposition does involves painting them with the rhetoric of violence, this appellation–which they didn’t choose–included?