There is a naive part of me that feels there is a way to get to the bottom of every controversy. That, if I meticulously dissect every argument from somebody who doesn't think clearly, I can get them to concede or at least seriously doubt their beliefs.
Sure, I have been wrong before. It's easy to proclaim how many times one is wrong in an attempt to secretly convey their real message: It's not that I am closed-minded, it's that your arguments are wrong. Saying and doing are two different things of course. I have felt the reluctance to admit I was wrong when I realized I was wrong. Sometimes I explicitly admit that I was wrong. Sometimes I implicitly admit I am wrong by changing my argument around the point made, or I alter my conclusions based on the new, correct information. Yet, on some occasions I stoop the to same lows I accuse others of. I simply stop talking instead of admitting I am wrong. More and more I am making an effort to stop that. Sometimes though, the reason behind the abrupt end on my part is because I simply don't know what to say anymore. Maybe I am thrown into uncertainty and I need time to process. By the time I get the epiphany (if I do), the conversation has long since ended. Or maybe I realized the argument was a waste of time and I lost my interest.
But when I'm on the other end, I get annoyed. It reminds me of a post I made on Facebook about computers. Multiple people, each making an argument, getting it refuted, and bailing. I try to get them back into the conversations by tagging them and asking, 'Do you agree with my conclusion?'. Nothing. There is no accountability. People don't want to appear to be wrong.
I am a person that tries to believe in things that are real. Yeah, everybody says that about themselves. Consider this though: I used to be anti-gay-marriage. I used to staunchly argue against people who proclaim to be atheists. I used to emotionally attack those who believe morality could be subjective or relative. I used to think that justice must be better than mercy. I really do feel that (for the most part), I put in a decent effort to have my thoughts be modified by incoming evidence. Yet, I argue with some people and it's as if their heads live in another reality which abides by their own version of logic.
It should have been more obvious. There are people who believe Obama is an atheist, Muslim, communist, socialist, Satan worshiper that wants to instill marshal law. Few years ago when I typed in 'Obama is...' into Google search, the fourth results was 'Obama is the anti-Christ.' Even if I was the most skilled debater in history, I could ever get through to those people. Some things I see as truths. I think my arguments are valid and I don't really understand why or how people could disagree with me. And it can drive me nuts. Then again, maybe this is the same feeling the person on the other end is having. Sometimes I just want to shout, 'I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG, OK?'. Sometimes I want to invoke my authority: I've written a book about religion, buzz off. I have the largest Haswell overclocking thread on the entire internet. I've seen your objection many times, and probably phrased better in most of those instances.
But that's really, kindda a douchy, terrible thing to do. So I don't. I mean, saying 'do you know who I am?' feels like the height of arrogance. I don't feel comfortable saying it.
I'm going to try something new. I will try not to let my opinions about somebody's intellect dominate how I interact with them. If I met somebody online to talk about video games and I find out they have crazy beliefs about politics or religion which cannot be shaken, then I will tell them those topics are off limits. Either we can continuing arguing about these things, or we can talk about what we came to talk about... games or music or whatever. One of these options maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering, and the other does the exact opposite. Some fights are not worth having. Some arguments are constructive, some are not. If there's nothing left to glean from the debate, then why not just leave it? There is probably no way for me to get through to them anyways. Sometimes the opportunity cost is too great.
You probably already know that I'm referencing a recent event. I met somebody and we talked about video games all the time, until I brought up free will. I stopped the game I was playing to argue back and forth about free will. At the end I realized I have just wasted a part of my life achieving nothing but bringing more negative energy to the world. Again, that's not to say that I will dodge every conflict. Knowing my personality all too well, I will end up going into more arguments than I need to and staying in it for longer than I really should. It's like going to sleep too late: You know you'll hate yourself for staying up so late come tomorrow morning, but you do it anyways. And next morning, you tell yourself, 'holy shit, this is terrible, NEVER. AGAIN.', but you also know in the back of your mind that you're going to do it again. It's like compulsively checking social media, or reading your hate mail even if you know they are the minority of the messages heading your way.
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What is Intellectual Dishonesty?
It looks like I need to clear up what I mean by 'intellectual dishonesty' due to some misunderstandings. Hopefully I can end them here. The following are just my opinions, and what I mean when I say what I say.
Dishonesty means lying. Lying means to saying things that are not true with the intent to deceive. Jokes don't count. Omitting something important instead of saying something that is not true in order to deceive is an implicit lie. It is a distinction without much of a difference. The other person is trying to deceive me. They are a liar and cannot be trusted. You cannot 'accidentally lie'.
Intellectual honesty is very different. Intellectual dishonest is a failure to apply standards of rational evaluation that one is aware of in a self-serving fashion. (That's an awesome definition I copied from a wiki, by the way. :p )
Somebody could make a terrible argument full of fallacies which the bystanders should all easily notice. But moreover, the argument is so terrible it's pretty much disingenuous; even the person making the argument probably knows better on some level.
There are many examples of this. Shifting of the burden of proof is a classic one. Another is the argument from ignorance. The ad hominem is well-known. The 'if you don't care, why did you post?' comments are intellectually dishonest arguments because those arguments are almost always a semantic word trick. (For example, the person complaining is equivocating the word, 'care'. When somebody says they don't care, they mean they are not interested in the subject matter, and they commented to say they are annoyed by your beating of a dead horse and spamming the world with more useless commentary.)
These are all arguments which a good percentage of people intuitively feel is wrong on some level. But there are many other intellectually dishonest ways of debating. A person could change the subject when their current argument is failing. By keeping the other person mired in tangents, one can keep real criticism at bay. It's easy to bury the other person in nonsense that takes a long time to debunked. It can be hard to call somebody out when they do this.
Parroting statistics that are obviously dubious is also intellectually dishonest. The person is putting far more time scrutinizing others than their own statistics. A good example is the '1 in 4 women are raped' statistic.
So really, what I am saying is that being 'intellectually dishonest' means committing fallacies or using cheap debating tactics to prove a point or to deflect criticism so that one never has to deal with them. And this process has to be conscious on some level. Some people use these terrible tactics knowing full well they are doing so; in that case, it would border on dishonesty. But in many other cases, the person is too emotional and frazzled to fully recognize what they are doing. They just know that they are grasping for straws and making unsound arguments.
A recent example of shocking intellectual dishonesty is on Sam Harris' podcast with Omar Aziz. Aziz strongly disagreed with Sam Harris on the link between Islam and terrorism. To bolster his argument, he tried to defame Harris by claiming him to get into the Islam/Terrorism book business as a get quick rich scheme. When challenged by Harris with actual book publishing realities and specifics Aziz did not know, Aziz refused to back down... Repeatedly pointing out that Harris made SOME money on his book, and some is more than none if he had simply released his book for free on his blog.
I believe most people say things they think are true. Almost everybody is intellectually dishonest on some level, and some much more than others. If a person is explicitly aware what they are saying is untrue, he is likely not to say it in the first place. The mind has many ways of tricking itself and others though. Sometimes it's clear somebody is rejecting an idea because of the ramifications if it were true. There's a gut-feeling, a very defensive attitude that makes one want to do anything to make what the other person is saying not true. Of course, a perfectly rational person would let you carry them helplessly along your lines of thinking and logical arguments to arrive at your conclusion.
Do I feel that religious people are lying about their experiences? No. I don't think their experiences have correlations with reality though.
I have never seen Sam Harris as frustrated as he was during that podcast. Maybe Sam needs to do more of that mindfulness meditation he likes. And as for myself, I am not a very patient person. I'll go another way: I'll drop topics I don't want to discuss with some people. I do not see eye to eye with some people when it comes to intelligence, but we can still try to have fun talking about random, inconsequential things.
Discourse can be good and it can be bad.
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