Authenticity, philosophy, and advocacy (was Re: SC - questions)

[david friedman]

At 7:11 PM -0400 6/15/00, Morgana Abbey wrote:

>You think you're writing helpful advice.  To those of us who've never met
>you, a lot of you come across as little Hitlers who would think nothing
>of storming into someone's kitchen and berating them for not doing things
>exactly like you would.  Now I know everyone is gearing up into full
>denial, but that is how a lot of these posts are reading.

More precisely, that is how a lot of these posts are being read.

I can't speak for anyone else, but part of the reason I have just 
written two long posts responding to Balthazar on some of these 
issues is that I disagree with what seems to me to be the underlying 
assumption that leads to people reading posts this way--that one 
cannot argue passionately for doing something without being in favor 
of using force to make other people do it. Or, alternatively, that 
passionate arguing for something is somehow equivalent to forcing 
people to do it.

More generally, I am opposed to the approach that holds, at least 
implicitly, that nobody is ever entitled to tell anyone else anything 
since all opinions are equally valid, whether or not there are 
arguments and evidence to support them, truth being different for 
every individual. No living person believes that--if they did, they 
wouldn't bother to take their cars or computers to be fixed by people 
who know something about the subject instead of doing it themselves 
or picking someone at random to do it. But a lot of people seem to 
have been somehow talked into thinking they believe that, and end up 
writing as if they believe that.

Not only do I think the position is indefensible, I think it makes it 
substantially harder for people to talk with each other. When what A 
really wants to do is to persuade B that something is true, he has to 
pretend that he is merely suggesting that B might perhaps be 
interested in ...  .  Which is one of the reasons that I take any 
convenient opportunity to argue against that position. Fortunately 
Balthazar is more reasonable in practice than in theory, judging by 
his past responses to posts where I disagreed with him, so a good 
person to argue such things with.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/