From: Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Date: Sat Jun 12 1999 - 21:56:48 MDT
One of the biggest frustrations I have with this discussion list is the
inability of people to understand the viewpoints of others. The very idea
that the KKK would transform themselves into blacks if blacks were somehow
proven to be a superior race is ludicrous. Even though racists claim to
have scientific evidence for white superiority, they would never accept
scientific evidence of black superiority. To speculate that they would
clearly shows a lack of understanding of the mindset.
Most of the arguments on this list suffer from the same problem. People are
constantly projecting their own ideas into the minds of others and then
arguing straw-man points that were never actually expressed. People also
assume that the other person must logically come to the same conclusion, or
else they are intellectually dishonest. It doesn't occur to most people
that the other side really believes what they say, and most importantly,
that they have a different set of values or thought process. People really
do differ on what they want out of life, what they believe to be "fair",
what they believe to be "good", etc.
The same set of facts will lead different people to different value
judgements. We can argue a scientific truth (like 2+2=4) until everyone
agrees. We can never get agreement on value judgements. (Are guns good?
Are copies really "me"? Do we want cameras watching us everywhere? Is
so-and-so a good author? etc....)
-- Harvey Newstrom <mailto://newstrom@newstaffinc.com> <http://newstaffinc.com> Author, Consultant, Engineer, Legal Hacker, Researcher, Scientist.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:09 MST