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Why do people not understand that you can agree with one thing someone said or did while disagreeing with the majority of what they stand for? (www.youtube.com)

submitted 10 months ago by Lafari@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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An example is that I generally despise Jordan Peterson and most of what he says, but I often quote one thing that Jordan Peterson said (in the linked video) because I think it's a good summary of why toxic positivity doesn't work.

People (who hate JP) freak out when I quote him and say "Why tf are you quoting Jordan Peterson? Are you a insert thing that Jordan Peterson is?" And I'm like "No, I generally disagree with him on most points, aside from this one thing." But they don't believe or accept it and assume that I must be a #1 Jordan Peterson fan or something.

I think it can be considered a partial agreement, majority disagreement. Or a partial agreement with a person you generally disagree with. But I'd be open to other terms of how to describe this in a way people can understand.

Also, to avoid the controversy of referencing Jordan Peterson, if anyone has a better summary of the same concept explained by a different person in a way as well as he does, that would be appreciated too.

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[-] PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think what people are intuiting is really in two parts. Like another person said, if an observation is true, you can probably find someone who said it better.

The other thing is that crafted personae (think Peterson, Ayn Rand, Shapiro, Rush Limbaugh) will take a position and argue for it on the basis of their other opinions. Each observation is meant to be a facet of an integrated philosophy.

So if they take position A, they will support it by opinions X, Y, and Z. If you accept A, as presented by them, but reject X, Y, and Z, then it’s up to you - if you’re using them as a point of reference, to point out the flaws in their supporting arguments and substitute your own. If you do not, it’s reasonable for a listener to think you also subscribe to their supporting premises.

Let’s say we’re having dinner and you comment that Ayn Rand was right when she said welfare is evil. Rand meant that welfare is evil because it takes the hard-earned wealth from the good and virtuous rich and gives it to the lazy, greedy poor. If you go no further than naming her and stating your agreement, we will probably think you picked her because you agree with her reasoning. You may actually mean that you prefer a universal basic income over welfare, or a completely egalitarian society where everyone from surgeons and ceos to grocery clerks make the same wage. Or you might be advocating for societies like those documented by David Graeber, who describes the indigenous people of the Northeast US where there was no notion of cash or barter but instead something closer to “from each according to their ability to each according to their need.” But because you started by quoting Rand and not Marx, people aren’t going to just jump to that conclusion.

It’s like why math teachers ask you to show your work. If you made a bunch of self-cancelling errors and blundered onto the right answer, you didn’t actually learn the material, so the fact that you wrote down the numerically correct answer doesn’t mean that you understand how to solve that kind of problem, and it will get 0 credit. The same for a philosophy or history professor who wants you to justify your answer and not just write down a one sentence opinion.

this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023

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