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Many of our ideas about the world are based more on feelings than facts, sensibilities than science, and rage than reality. We gravitate toward ideas that make us feel comfortable in areas such as religion, politics, philosophy, social justice, love and sex, humanity, and morality. We avoid ideas that make us feel uncomfortable. This avoidance is a largely unconscious process that affects our judgment and gets in the way of our ability to reach rational and reasonable conclusions. By understanding how our mind works in this area, we can start embracing uncomfortable ideas and be better informed, be more understanding of others, and make better decisions in all areas of life.
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I wrote an entire blog post on this claim :) https://www.bobennett.com/posts/bobennett/stay-calm-enjoy-life.html I don't see this as a fallacy per se, but I do see this as a rule that works sometimes, but other times is misapplied and used for manipulation. It comes down to ignoring context. For example, there are bystander laws. From a law website:
Of course, this is from a legal perspective and not a moral one, but the idea is the same. There are situations where it is clear that one would bear moral and/or legal culpability if they do nothing (i.e., "tolerate"). One example might be a person at a frat party watching one of his frat brothers rape someone. The concept of "intervening" has morphed to "tolerating," suggesting a more passive involvement with the illegal act or typically immoral act. In my blog post I ask the question, if you are not actively doing something to stop child pornography, are you complicit? According to the interpretation and use of the rule by many, you would have to be. Activists who fight against child porn would like you to believe this because it helps their cause. The problem is demonstrated using a reductio: If there are a hundred thousand causes, it is absurd to think we are complicit in the social and moral evils of 99,999 of them if we spend our time fighting against just one of them. In conclusion, no specific fallacy, but certainly an area where people are manipulated by activists because they either don't think about this enough or they fear the social backlash for refusing to join their cause. |
answered on Saturday, Nov 06, 2021 07:27:22 AM by Bo Bennett, PhD | |
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