Guest post: Extrapolating the lessons of science to a “credo quia absurdum”
Originally a comment by Sonderval on But I want to, he said.
What do they see that I don’t see???
They “see” the same thing we all see. But they do know that if you are smart you look deeper than the obvious, and that looking only at the surface is what stupid and bigoted people do.
Smart people (having read Kant) know that “I think therefore I am” is not as convincing as it looks on first sight.
Smart people know that species, despite looking clearly distinct, actually evolve.
Smart people know that space and time are not what they seem.
Smart and non-bigoted people know that despite looking different, members of all races are just human.
So this allows one simple conclusion: reality is always deeper and more complicated than we think. Therefore if you are smart, you should never accept a simple thing at face value. The fact that trans women are usually obviously male just confirms how deep and well-reasoned believing trans ideology actually is. To prove this, you can point to people having DSD or at clownfish etc.
It is exactly the fact that it looks so absurd that makes it attractive to at least some intellectual people and this is probably also part of the reason why so many so-called sceptics fall for it: they have (correctly) become wary of things looking simple and of believing that things are what they look like and so they conclude (incorrectly) that things are never simple and that it is always wrong to believe it could be. So telling them “but this is obvious” only shows how shallow and bigoted you are.
In a sense it is extrapolating the lessons of science to a “credo quia absurdum”.
Smart people know that space and time are not what they seem.
What do they seem, and what are they?
A: It made sense to believe the sun went ’round the Earth, because that’s what it looked like.
B: And how would it have looked if the Earth went ’round the sun?
Colin #1, space and time seem to be absolute, but are in fact relative to the observer.
See: theory of relativity
@Steven #3
It’s not simply that they appear to be separate; at the level of ordinary human experience, they are separate. Newton’s pronouncement of absolute space and time was disputed even during his lifetime.
@Colin Day
Yes, I was thinking about special and general relativity. (I actually have written a book on that…)
Newton had some reason at least for absolute space because rotational motion (different from linear motion) can be detected directly.
Do you have any sources for someone doubting Newton’s absolute time? I never heard about that before.
But in other cases they have less problems with something being simple. The simple idea that homeopathie doesn’t work because it doesn’t contain any active ingredient doesn’t seem to bother them.
In that case they don’t think highly of the suggestion that something deep like quantum-effects are going on.
I suspect that for a lot of these people, “skeptic”, “rationalist”, “humanist” has become an identity, instead of a set of values to strife for. This allows them to skip any serious analytical thinking. When presented with a situation, they don’t ask themselves the question how a skeptical, rationalist, humanist principles should be applied. They just go with their first reaction and then think that because they are [or more accuratly identify as] a skeptic, rationalist, humanist, their choice is the skeptic, rationalist, human choice and thus correct.
@Axxyaan
I agree, it is part of an identity and it actually makes them more susceptible to fool themselves.
I think most of these “skeptics” have learned the following skills very well:
– How to present arguments that strengthen a certain point of view
– How to use logic in arguments
– How to debunk (or raise doubts about) counter-arguments
What they have not learned is how to actually weigh the results of all this. So when the conclusion is quite clear, they are able to look smart (debunking bigfoot or climate change denial or homeopathy etc.), but how to actually arrive at a conclusion, especially when they have some emotional investment in the question, is much more difficult and far beyond them.
They have not learned the most crucial skeptical lesson: The easiest person to fool is yourself and smart people are better in using arguments and evidence to fool themselves.
How else could we explain that someone who invented the concept of “Courtiers reply” starts to argue with oh-so-sophisticated concepts when it comes to gender, without having any evidence that there even is such a thing as “gender identity”?
How else could we explain that someone who vehemently argued against giving Lupron to autistic teenagers to cure their autism because it is chemical castration applauds giving it to “trans” (and often also autistic) teenagers to cure their gender dysphoria?
@Sonjderval #5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%E2%80%93Clarke_correspondence
@Colin Day
Thanks. But that only refers to space, not to time or did I overlook something?
No. It didn’t include time.