Am 24.09.2014 01:43, schrieb Saul Luizaga:

> I can't believe the reaction of you people to my messages, I thought
> you'd take them with rational, skeptical and critical thinking, but
> you're taking them emotionally, "I'm uneasy",

You're entirely missing the point here.

I /do/ take the content you linked to with rational, skeptical and 
critical thinking.

The point here is the way you try to get "your" messages across.

And yes, I also /do/ take that with rational, skeptical and critical 
thinking: There is a certain gut feeling, developed from experience, 
that rings an alarm bell in me - a gut feeling that I partially 
understand, partially don't, but one thing I know is that this gut 
feeling is there for a reason. It is not something that has been 
instilled in me by my parents. It is not something I have been taught by 
some mentor. It is not something that I've adopted from some peer group. 
It is not something I've trained myself to. To the very contrary: This 
gut feeling is the result of a lesson I've learned, personally.


In a nutshell, this whole thing boils down to whether "good" ends 
justify "bad" means, and I think they don't. If you want to make the 
world a less "corrupted" place, using "corrupted" means gets you nowhere.

Now with "good" and "bad" I don't mean the concepts coined by our 
Christian heritage, and when I say "corrupted" I don't refer to the 
concept of corruption as understood in politics. I even go as far as 
saying I'm not talking about moral here, because moral is always 
subjective and emotional. I'm talking about some basal, plain, rational, 
non-judgemental "yup/nope, it's (un)desirable for this to be 
done/achieved/whatever".


So, as I said before: The point here is the way you try to get "your" 
messages across.

And those quotation marks delineate exactly the issue I have with it: 
 From all I read, I can only conclude that those are not /your/ 
messages. It is something you may have been instilled with by your 
parents, have been taught by some mentor, have adopted from some peer 
group, or have trained yourself to make your own - but at the end of the 
day these messages are still /not/ yours: You don't have any personal 
connection with them.

You may not want this to be true; you may not believe this to be true; 
and I may even be wrong about it; but it's that very lesson I've 
learned, personally, that has given me some very sensitive instinct to 
exactly this type of situation.


And I've also learned that evangelizing about someone else's message is 
- as far as "desirability to be done" goes - equivalent to spreading 
outright lies.

Yup, that's right: If you have been taught that E=mc^2, and have not 
done any toying around with this formula whatsoever to see what it does, 
where it comes from and where it is leading to, then whenever you tell 
someone else that E=mc^2, in a certain sense you're telling them an 
outright lie.

Why? Because you, as the one spreading a message, are responsible for 
the message, so it is your duty to verify that what you pass on is legit.

If you don't know whether you're spreading gold or horsecrap, you have 
two possibilities to deal with it: (A) make it clear to the audience 
that you don't know which one it is, or (B) hold your tongue.


As I said, you may not want this to be true; you may not believe this to 
be true; and I may even be wrong about it; but I have the strong feeling 
that you have no own experience whatsoever to back up the sources you're 
linking.

(And again, this is not about whether the message is legit or not - it 
is about the messenger not knowing.)


You may ask, why should (A) a messenger be responsible for the message 
he carries, if (B) anyone has the possibility to check for themselves?

 From my very own experience, I know that ignoring (A) is precisely what 
leads to mass delusions and stuff like the 3rd Reich, because (B) is an 
oversimplifying illusion.

Post a reply to this message