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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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Who decides what is stupid and what isn't? There better be a good, clear, obvious, and universal objective method of identifying stupidity if you're going to treat it as malicious.
That's part of the deal: you don't need to. Once stupidity and malice are taken as morally equivalent, it becomes morally irrelevant to decide if someone's actions are motivated by one or another.
My point is that people give a free pass to actions harming the others, as long as they're seen as "unintentional"; for example, the "powerful psychopaths" OP talks about often rely on it. And yet nobody knows someone else's intentions, we know at most what others do and what they say.
So for example. Your business relies on blood diamonds? You're financing terrorism and should be treated as such, regardless of your intentions. Your corporation employs slave work? You shall be treated as a slaver, committing crimes against humankind.
You do need to take into account if someone is able to be held responsible for one's own actions. But we already do this anyway, so no change.
At some point, does it matter?
Give people the resources to educate themselves. Give them the benefit of the doubt, once. But after that? Screw 'em. Move on without 'em.
I think it does matter what you define as being stupid, yes. Let's say that I want to call being transgender, not having enough money to buy food, and being an immigrant all stupid. I should treat those things as malice because they're stupid, right?
I mean, people do treat those things as malicious already. So if anything returning the same treatment would be fair-play.
But more to the point, I don't think that's analogous to what the above posters was trying to say? A person "being" transgender/poor/an immigrant isn't the same as say, a person denying climate change.
And that's how I read the above commenter. There are two reasons for people to hold a climate-change-denying view, ignorance and malice. Ignorance can be met with education. But if a person begins holding onto their ignorance, their actions are fundamentally indistinguishable from malice.
I assumed it was a comment about the tactics we decide to employ when dealing with people. And at a certain point, if a person is stupid or if they're malicious... Well it sorta does not matter.
Okay, sure, what about vaccines then? Hypothetically, I think the idea that we shoot ourselves full of mercury and viruses is extremely stupid. Malicious too, by your model. And also, I don't think climate change is real, so now I think you're stupid and you think I'm stupid and it's he said she said and if we both think the other is being malicious we have a brawl. The thing that fixes this is a definition of "stupid" that we both agree on that is clear, useful, and objective. What is that definition?
Yeah I still think you are talking about something else?
In reality though some people are right and some people are wrong. The person who talks about vaccines as just "shooting ourselves full of mercury and viruses" is either stupid or malicious. What they think of me doesn't matter, because this conversation is about how I should treat this hypothetical person.
And that was the point I made. Ultimately it doesn't matter if they are stupid or malicious, I should treat them the same way. Because their intent doesn't really matter, their actions do.
That is not how language or communication works...
People who are thought of as stupid, rarely agree that they are stupid. Same goes for malicious, to be honest.
Exactly. So we can't just "Treat stupidity as a type of malice", because nobody can agree on what is and isn't stupidity.
Alright I don't know who you are talking to, but it's very clearly not me.
Alright, from the very words of your own comment:
in direct response to my comment
Yes, it does matter. If you want to "Give people the resources to educate themselves", you have to have a definition of stupid and not stupid that guides your choice of what is and isn't good education; in order to "Give them the benefit of the doubt, once", you have to have a criteria for when they've stopped being stupid.
Nobody decrees who is stupid or not. That's a judgement everyone makes for themselves.
No. I don't.
When I hear people talking about climate change like it doesn't exist, or has "concerns" about transgender people existence, or something like that, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are just ignorant. I'll be willing to talk to them, and maybe explain some of the misconceptions they might have.
But if they aren't willing to listen, then they... Are either stupid or malicious. But the difference isn't meaningful. They act exactly the same, either way.
They don't have to agree me thinking they are either stupid or malicious. It literally changes nothing if they disagree.
Yeah, let's execute the intellectually disabled. Super progressive.
What? Quite obviously not what I said.
I think that @darq@kbin.social got better the connotation of "stupid" from my comment. But just to be sure:
I'm defining "stupidity" here as behaviour coming from people who are able to reason, and thus can be held responsible for their actions. The intellectually disabled ones (plus children) are excluded by this definition.