Hugbox orthodoxy

Multiplayer Discussion
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Elsewhere on the internet I noticed a very, very upvoted post. It was talking about how, despite everything that life throws at us, at the end of the day, we’re all the same. We all rest our heads on our pillows at night. Well all have a need for unconditional love. And so on.

Something about her specific examples hit me wrong, personally. I mean, I am pretty darn happy living alone, and I don’t own a pillow. So I quickly realized that it’s just objectively false that we’re all the same.

But going past those superficial matter of truthiness, the more I thought about it, the more it got me upset. It’s just an impractical thing to believe, with bad consequences. Imagine you have a group of people who have been all taught “we are all the same” and you introduce to them an individual person of a type the group has never heard or seen of. It’s not going to be immediately obvious that the individual is the same, because they literally aren’t. “We are all the same” is not a message that inoculates people against bigotry towards others, because it’s so easy to exclude people from the “we” in the first place.

The truth is that people are all different and that there’s nothing wrong with being different. Not “we are all the same,” but “we are different and that’s okay.” It might seem like a trivial little thing to write a few paragraphs about, but the difference isn’t trivial. If you’re trying to convince someone they’re not weird, a lot of times you’re going to make the truth your enemy, and if the person wants to make your words true they might try to end that weirdness inside them. But if you say weird is okay, you’re not encouraging conformity. You’re embracing individuality.

All of this made me think about the attitudes of a lot of people on these forums. You know, the people who hate decks because they’re “unfun.” Well if it’s true that we’re all the same, then yes, “we” are like “me” so what I don’t find fun isn’t fun to the group. But the thing is, we are not all the same, and it is okay to be weird. So what’s not fun to you is fun to someone else, and vice versa, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ve been against this particular nerf philosophy before, in many previous posts, but I’m realizing now it’s a much larger and more pervasive phenomenon than simply the Hearthstone forums.

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Well…

People are dumb enough to buy that way of thinking and in this specfic case i gonna call it exactly what it is rather than try to convince someone.

On a cultural level this is basically soviet union all over again and it’s so disgusting that people should feel ashamed for thinking like that.

We’re not equal and there is no problem with it.

The humanity is wise enough to deal with that in a healthy manner.

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Well, if i want to troll someone who believes that “we are all the same”, then I’d start saying that I believe in/agree with something that they don’t. The more outrageous and degenerate the better.

When they object, I can be all “BUT I THOUGHT WE ARE ALL THE SAME”, so clearly they should be with me on this thing that they hate/don’t agree with/find disgusting.

Or I find something they don’t agree with, and I act all surprised that they’d actually have that position, as if they’re the freak and I, no “we” normal people who are all the same.

Another easy one is “then surely you would love to give me all your money, since I would love to give myself all my money”

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Yeah, but that wouldn’t convince.

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Difficult, but interesting topic you got here. Maybe you should first define what do you mean by “same”? If you talk about talent or skill, then I agree with you that we’re different, but if it comes to the basic understanding that we’re humans we are indeed all the same, because we all have some things in common: birth, basic desires like being loved and death. It’s really important to clarify what is meant by “same”.

Just my 2 cents.

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I find it easier to talk about how we should be than how we are.

What we should be, in a word, is specialists. Everyone having their own different role to play, a different area of expertise, a different service to render to others.

In order for specialization to work, I do believe there needs to be some degree of orthodoxy in what people believe — or at least in what they dare (not) to do. Each person basically needs to trade fair for the system described above to work. But this ideological infrastructure should be limited solely to the enabling of specialization. In other words, we should only be the same to the point that it allows us to be different peacefully.

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Well, I believe that you can only convince somebody if that somebody wants to be convinced in the first place.

If they don’t want to be convinced, nothing I say or do would change their mind.

So I might as well have some fun while I post.

Of course if it seems like they could be convinced I’ll refrain or at least lighten up on the trolling.

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If by “convince” you mean with facts and evidence, yes. But it’s amazing how a little fear can change whether or not somebody wants to be convinced. “Behold! an intimidatingly attractive, out of your league woman! Would you like a beer sir?”

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If someone doesn’t want to be convinced, even facts and evidence wouldn’t work. The human mind (aka our monkey brains) are very good at rationalizing, engage in cognitive dissonance, making up excuses, telling ourselves what we want to hear, etc

And this is before the beers.

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It’s more about status actually.

And that is becoming a real issue with internet.

It does not really matter what you say but who you are.
If you’re somewhat sucessful there gonna be always someone who think you’re right despite of how bad whatever you said is.

And it’s really dangerous because were going back to tribal thinking.

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Well, as someone who likes difference, I don’t see that as horrible.

I tend to believe that there is such a thing as objective morality, but a far more important point is: I do not believe that human beings such as myself know morality. So it’s less “despite of how bad what was said is,” and more “despite how bad what was said seems to be.”

How do we better know? Have someone try it out. The results speak for themselves.

Now, admittedly, a huge problem with modern people, and probably people forever, is that they would refuse to be empirical with the historical data. Wanting to rerun certain experiments that have been run over and over again for a hundred or more years. But even if diminishing returns is very much a thing, more data still better than less data. And one of the most important reasons to embrace difference is as a result of embracing the truth that we don’t know nearly as much as we’d like to think we do.

Well I believe that’s what my opening post is about. What is the difference between “we are all the same?” and “we are all the same tribe?” What is the difference between “we are different and that’s okay” and “we are all different tribes and that’s okay?”

What I’m attacking is a subversive tribalistic element that is coopting messages of tolerance. Why am I? Because tribalism can’t be tolerant long-term, and isn’t.

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Because the instant you identify yourself as “not same tribe” you’re the enemy.

Not even human. Just the enemy.

So they don’t feel bad at all for any BS they do to you.

Basically the moral Compass breaks.

This is what is so bad with tribal mentality.

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It’s more like it turns off. It doesn’t apply to The Other but it’s still on for the ingroup. It doesn’t feel off.

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Nah.

Just check what happens in those countries internally that you see that over time they just destroy themselves alone by trying to take a higher place.

Because doctrines like those are based on ressent so they not have real “allies”.

They’re just using “their group”.

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I think you might be othering them too much. Having an ideology that makes you intolerant to other ideologies doesn’t transform a human being into a demon. There are good people everywhere, including within groups of people who believe some extremely stupid things.

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Sincerely?

I seeing that happen right now in my country and there is just no dialogue.

The only thing my people gained by being tolerant to stuff like this was misery and violence.

The only advice i can give to people is that maybe our ancestors did take some Wars too far but their reason was legit.

I live as an exiled right now thanks to my country being “tolerant” to that type of ideology.

If i even dare to get back…

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Well like I said before, there’s two parts. There’s the part where diversity can grow, where people should be different. But there’s also the ideological infrastructure that allows diversification to work in the first place, and that part should have some orthodoxy. A part to be different and a part to be same; yin and yang.

If that which is to be defended is not defended, yes, there will be problems. But you’ve probably heard the proverb: to he who has a hammer, all problems look like nails. It’s important to remember that not every opinion is a “nail” that needs to be hammered down like the others. But I reckon it’s also important to see a nail as a nail.

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The problem is that some people (group 1) are different and specialized in their ability to BS and take advantage of other people.

And some other people (group 2) are different in being vulnerable to the predation from group 1.

Then you have group 2 advocating for group 1 while they are being screwed over by those very same people.

It’s the same everywhere. In Hearthstone it seems to me people are more vulnerable to a failure to see nuance: Druid should be nerfed ONLY when it’s over performing; mana discounts to 0 are ACCEPTABLE depending on the deck’s play pattern; etc.

In reality, biologically speaking we’re all very similar. Most of our biological diversity lies in Africa; I would argue that it’s more accurate to say that there’s a single IndoEuropean race, an Austro-Melanesian race and multiple African races than the mess we discuss nowadays.

It’s just that our brains are so complicated that we’re cognizant of very minor differences in our cognition.

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That’s not a problem, so much as neutral. People have a tendency to believe that their “team” believes in the creed of their “team” because of facts and logic, but this is rarely the case. The vast majority of people who believe true things have the same cause of belief as the “other team,” it’s just that they happened to be persuaded to the truth instead of falsehood. It’s not quite dumb luck, because the critical thinkers do tend to be on the right side and can be persuasive, but it’s pretty close to dumb luck.

But my point is, the ability to “BS people” is a power that can and is often used for good. It’s usually necessary to convince large numbers of people who refuse to properly think. And in a way that is taking advantage of them. Propaganda is not purely a tool of evil.

Group 2 is literally everyone, to some degree or another. You might be specialized in one area of knowledge, or maybe even several, but no one is specialized in most. Everyone makes irrational leaps of faith. Everyone.

Well, yes. To not do so would be anti-intellectualism.

That’s very subjective. Those who specialize in narrow fields of knowledge should be compensated somehow. What is underpayment and what is overpayment? How is one to know?

Overall this post reeks of an us vs them populism that I’m just not down with.

Um, one, holy non sequitur Batman. Two, not touching this with a 39½ foot pole.

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You started talking about our differences and similarities. By all accounts, there’s no winged humans, venomous humans, humans that lay eggs, have gills, etc.

We can only talk about the differences we actually have.

The major differences in our cognition seem to have a distribution across the board. We find people with genetically influenced Bipolar, ADHD, etc throughout the whole earth.

The ability to convince people of nonsense is not a skill that should be commended. How many people have been killed for witchcraft, belonging to the wrong group, having an unusual trait, or “not acting right”.

Nobody is getting killed here, but the amount of misinformation that is spouted, and how much it twists people’s perceptions should be disconcerting to anyone with a critical bias. Because if it’s happening about something as unimportant and trivial as this game, it’s only a reflection of what happens to actually important issues and problems people face in their lives.