1. The Concept of “Thought Crime” The term is of course from George Orwell’s 1984, in which people are arrested for thinking thoughts that fail to align with the party’s ideology. More generally, we can think of “thought crime” as consisting of (alleged) moral wrongs that consist in having illicit beliefs or belief-forming tendencies which are serious enough to deserve punishment.
Fascinating. An analogy that comes to mind is that most people that are trying -- and largely failing -- to reduce the size and power of government are akin to doctors hundreds of years ago before the germ & virus theories of disease.
Potential biological analogs for other treatments:
1. Physical aversion and barriers to mind viruses, i.e. physically not listening to or watching mind viruses. That includes some news, social media posts, movies, television, books, etc., but it might also include physically removing oneself from people that are talking about bad ideas in the same way that if I was at a party and someone looked sick and was coughing, I might politely walk away.
The healthiest action would probably be to build a mental muscle of quickly determining what might be a mind virus, so that we're not totally closed to hearing new ideas, but we minimize infection risk.
2. Mental exercise to build the immune system as with physical exercise. Perhaps creating a mental workout routine for people that helps them reason, and, more specifically, help build the mental muscle of quickly determine what might be a mind virus.
3. A social immune system. Perhaps the smartest folks like yourself can build an online database of what are likely to be mind viruses in the same way that Wikipedia has a list of viruses. That could include a description of why it's a virus along with potential treatments, etc. People could then consult what might be a mind virus. This could also include example pictures of symptoms and videos of symptoms of when someone may have a mind virus (yelling emotionally, etc.).
4. A list of mental antiviral treatments and mental vaccines such as a list of books, videos, etc. showing how to reason and showing problems with specific mind viruses.
5. Rhetorically, switching to arguing at a meta-level about the fact that the person has a mind virus (and the evidence for this, rather than just an ad hominem) rather than allowing the mentally infected individual to control what is being argued about. A related quote from Kierkegaard; by analogy, why should we be allowing diseased individuals control the topic of conversation?
"People do not know what they ought to say but only that they must say something. It is one thing to be a physician beside a sickbed, and another thing to be a sick man who leaps out of his bed by becoming an author, communicating bluntly the symptoms of his disease. Perhaps he may be able to express and expound the symptoms of his illness in far more glowing colors than does the physician when he describes them; for the fact that he knows no resource, no salvation, gives him a peculiar passionate elasticity in comparison with the consoling talk of the physician who knows what expedients to use."
I know the meme and mind virus ideas aren't particularly new, but the power of your argument really calls for a totally new social science sub-field!
The sickness analogy seems weak. What is the analog to the situation where an idea looks questionable, but is actually worthwhile? Is there a situation where in retrospect, we wish we had gone and given the coughing person a kiss? Cowpox I suppose. We have not encountered many diseases that delivered benefits, but many heretical ideas have done so.
Aug 19, 2023·edited Aug 19, 2023Liked by Michael Huemer
In biology terms, it seems generally important to have some exposure to mild viruses to build our immune system by activating it and generating immunological memory so that if we are exposed to a larger dose or a worse strain, we might better deal with that using memory B & T cells.
By analogy, it might be good to get a small dose of mind viruses to understand the techniques they are using to try to invade our minds so that, in the future, our mental immunological memory might defend us against more clever demagogues, for example.
If someone could investigate thoroughly and come to a conclusion that P, but didn’t, remained with ~P, did something on the basis on ~P and bit was bad, but he was instrumentally rational not to investigate, could we blame him for his action?
Thought experiment — you know that in next year god will choose one human randomly and ask them what to do regarding some controversial topic (e.g. what to do with climat crisis)
If you are a random person, almost surely you won’t make any more difference than you make voting in the US, so instrumentally you are justified to default mode on this and not do any further research
Seems like that’s not worthy a blame
Also, in the previous case it seems quite weird that intuitions about whether it’s okay to blame person in question change not only because of one’s decision to investigate or not, but also because of whether one is actually chosen by god to make the call.
No, you wouldn't be blameworthy for not doing research, not knowing that you would be chosen. However, you also should not form strong opinions on climate change in the absence of evidence; you should withhold judgment. And once you find out that you're chosen, you should try to do as much research as possible to find out what the best policy is.
Many people appear to have strong opinions about many controversial issues, without knowing much about them, and many try to persuade other people of those opinions, go to protests, etc.
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard tells a story about a madman who escapes from an asylum, and he realises that if he just says mad stuff people will quickly figure out he's an escaped lunatic and they'll send him back. So he decides he's only going to say true, uncontroversial things. And when he goes into town, to everyone he meets he says "The world is round." That's all he says to anybody. And it's true. The world is round. But they quickly realise he's mad and lock him up. And what Kierkegaard was saying is that you can have all the facts and all the truths and still be wrong, because you haven't appreciated the context in which those facts matter.
When you state some fact, inference to best explanation tells me that you care about it, that you consider this information to be important, valuable, action-guiding.
Now some facts, in most ordinary contexts, have only (or mostly) evil utilities, which is why, for instance, you don't say "you are dumber than me" to your colleague who has worse grades, nor do you say "you are fat" to someone who is overweight, nor do you say "your mom is dead" to an orphan boy, nor do you say "my son is hiding in the attic" to the killer (unless you are Kant).
You need a very good reason in order to say a hurtful fact, but people don't usually have one. The guy being insensitive is sometimes promoting a supremacist agenda, no matter how factual (and often it isn't even factual). So it is the case that this guy should be repreended.
Finally, lets make it clear that only a mindreader can punish you for crime thoughts... but it isn't a crime THOUGHT anymore after you SAID it, is it?
Btw, thanks for the reflections, Michael Huemer! I am left-winged as you can probably tell, but I'm actually your fan and I hope this comment sounded dialectic, not hostile or something.
Interesting posts, thank you. The Kierkegaard anecdote was perfect. Two thoughts: Not talking about facts that might hurt someone‘s feelings might make some people who hear them for the first time combined with the ominous „this is what they don’t want you to know“ very vulnerable to undesirable ideologies (like „Supremacy“). We can only grow if we accept to learn something we dislike (about ourselves or about our „group“) every now and then. Also: Obviously „thought crime“ refers to thoughts that others can hear or read. You seemed to imply that you were making a point, but I fail to see it.
Hi, Uta! The point of this specific phrase was that after one says or writes something, even if it is true, he/she becomes a candidate for reprehension/punishment and this shouldn't be seen as "being punished for thinking something", which would be too much in my opinion.
This is being punished for doing things with words. Like in the Kant's situation: after you tell the killer "Hey! The guy you're searching for is hiding in the attic!", you had a causal role in his death. Maybe you shouldn't be guilty of murder, but it's legitemate that people reprehend you.
Of course, in some cases, the benefits outweigh the harms. But not always, so we must be vigilant and discerning.
I don't think not talking makes people more vulnerable to supremacist ideologies. What makes them vulnerable is an 'ought', not an 'is'. To be more precise, what makes them vulnerable is capacitism.
If you don't see having lower IQ as undesirable, we can all share our IQ scores and be happy with our inevitable differences together and grow(?) accepting the facts. Someone or some group has to be below average. That's simply how averages work.
But if you do see having lower IQ as undesirable, then I'm justified in not wanting you to know mine or my group's anymore, because you might start thinking of "solutions" to this "problem", and some solutions require me being denied a part of society. Maybe people won't want me to reproduce, for instance.
Hi and thank you for answering. Your example of „reprehensible speech“ is solid and fulfills the criteria for a “speech act”. The examples I had in mind were more along the line of opinions considered undesirable by an ideology driven group along the lines of the example given in Huemer’s text. As far as the “group differences in IQ” are concerned, I agree that the subject is poisonous and as long as the cultural differences between groups (value assigned to the idea of getting an education etc.) explain most of the differences, I also see way more harm than (if any) benefit in pushing it. When I mentioned people who only ever heard of one side of an issue being more vulnerable to persuasion when they hear facts that seem to contradict the world view they learned, I was mainly thinking of conspiracy theories.
> Are there any thought crimes recognized by conservatives? Certainly there are thoughts they would disapprove of and whose expression would anger them — say, the thought that the United States is evil and a valid target for terrorist attacks. But it’s rare for conservatives to call for punishing someone for thought crime.
Rare? When conversatives have (or had) the upper hand, it's not rare at all. From attacking those who advocated for abolitionism back in the day, to asking for the firing (or worse) of communists and "fellow travellers", to asking for punishment such as boycotts and cancellations for artists who spoke up against Bush's wars, and so on. Hoover and McCarthy sure weren't leftists.
> Anyway, in all of these cases — wokism, Marxism, Christianity, Islam — it is simply ridiculous to claim that anyone who investigates sufficiently carefully and thoroughly will agree with the belief system.
Considering that some of the greatest thinkers have "investigated" and agreed with each of those belief systems, that's simply stating the author's prejudices (or those of his society or peer group) as fact.
Or it's the author abusing the terms "sufficiently carefully and thoroughly" to allow himself to move the goalposts as needed (such that, anybody who studied those things deeply, and is well read, and educated, and with high IQ etc, but still agrees with one of those, can be said to "not have sufficiently studied it". In other words, sufficiently here meaning basically "agrees with the author").
<When conversatives have (or had) the upper hand, it's not rare at all. From attacking those who advocated for abolitionism back in the day, to asking for the firing (or worse) of communists and "fellow travellers", to asking for punishment such as boycotts and cancellations for artists who spoke up against Bush's wars, and so on. Hoover and McCarthy sure weren't leftists.>
Yes, there is a cancel culture among the right (although the left/right spectrum is a myth--see Bryan Caplan’s recent Substack posts). Communists were fired from government because they were a security risk (as revealed by the Venona project); they were fired from universities because they weren’t free to teach the truth (they were subject to the party line--see Sidney Hook’s monograph _Heresy Yes, Conspiracy No_); they were blacklisted by Hollywood because they were a financial risk and tried to sneak in communist propaganda into films (although this probably wasn’t a big problem). Unfortunately, there were miscarriages of justice and perhaps the blacklist was one. Also, communists were happy to blacklist and even jail Trotskyists and anti-communists.
I think the argument that believing, e.g., that "transwomen aren't women" is bad has quite a few points in its favor.
If I have trans friends and know one person who believes that "transwomen aren't women", I might not want to be their friend because they might be rude to my trans friend.
Often, beliefs come in bundles, and even if "transwomen aren't women" is a purely metaphysical claim, it often comes bundled with other beliefs such as that trans people shouldn't have certain rights, they don't need or deserve certain protection, etc. One could imagine a trans person being very annoyed that they aren't allowed to join some organization, or maybe they were disowned by their parents.
And now if they meet a person who believes "transwomen aren't women," it might be pretty safe to assume they are not against their parents kicking them out.
Imagine you met someone, and you tell them you were kicked out by your parents for some non-trans reason. And they respond, "Nice, I think it's good they kicked you out". That would seem pretty rude. And there are plenty of beliefs that are mostly bundled up with other "rude" beliefs like that.
The mechanism described at the end basically worked for me with religion, specifically learning about cultural evolution by reading Hayek.
I don't know how many people with ideological 'no-go zones' have the full thought crime package though. The desire to suppress other's speech / and thoughts seems like an extension of the strategy that only works in an environment where the ideology is already dominant and funtions to cement it's dominance.
I really like what you say and I'm able to look past the clearly conservative bias. I'd love to share this with some liberal friends but I'm doubtful most could focus on the best parts of what you say, even if the biases make only a small and relatively unimportant appearance. With that in mind, there are a few things I wish were revised.
1 By far the biggest is that you start your examples with Wokeism. This is too much in their face. It would be far better to start with religion, especially given, as you say, that's where more formal versions of thought crime got its start.
2 While Marxism is a good example I think you miss a lot by not including McCarthyism. I think McCarthyism has more and better parallels to convince someone on the left of why Wokeism belongs on this list.
3 I like the examples of trans and intelligence but worry these are too much in liberals' faces. I'm not sure what would be better examples though. One example might be a belief in how our climate will change due to GHG increases. Again pretty much in their face. Maybe how resistance to the Covid vaccine shifted from liberals to conservatives as it shifted from Trump's to Biden s. IDK
I like to think about our beliefs and actions as ways yo handle a huge overwhelming reality. And that while our ling term memory can be limitless, that our working memory is highly limited.
So people can USUALLY just take in so much information at a time. Lets say they can handle 7 bits of information, that then needs to be digested and is integrated into our long term memory. Or worldviews/beliefs
When people are stressed, we literally often get tunnel vission, and that amount of bits is reduced to 5, or 3. At minimum, we become less open to new information and things to process.
Emotionally charged things often becomes a lot bigger then when they arnt emotionally charged, because aside from just the subject, we also have other bits that has to be handled, like our stress, others feelings, etc.
So its very easy for an emotionally charged thing to become SO CHaRGED that unless you break it down, or the person trusts you, that it automaticlly become too large for their working memory to handle
How we present things and teach them also affects how well the person can absorb it
A good teacher often knows how to make the large thing smaller and digestable, and to portion it out. That way the pupil can gradually absorb it all into their long term memory.
But a bad teacher, or honestly most people, dont have a good idea of what they even want to say exactly, and then it becomes emotionally charged and large and convulsted and too much for the other persons working memory to handle, and stress kicks in and likely fight or flight response.
Another part of all this is as you get to become an expert in something, you can start dividing the loads of bits into “chunks” that means you dont have to overload your working memory the same way. This is actually what memory experts do.
A beginner or someone unused to an idea on the other hand often have no idea how to do chunkifying and all that.
This is one reason why conflict can arise between an expert and beginner: fhe expert overloads the beginners brain, and makes them stressed, then the beginner feels stupid. And the beginner doesnt like feeling stupid so if they can, they accuse the expert of being biased and thus low status.
As for ways to handle this:
(This is all from the perspective of changing ONE individuals mind btw: a whole culture is a different matter)
Being pedagogical and a clear thinker and teacher. Knowing how to explain the thing
Know how to portion it, do not overwhelm them
Remember that you likely have a ton of shorthands that they dont. So as an example, to convince a socialist, dont go saying “FREEDOM”.
Start with the basics, then when they have absorbed that, maybe a chunk or two
Be considered someone worthy of respect and listening too, and that you have their best interest in mind. This makes them less stressed and increases their working memory.
Remember that emotional subjects gets larger and harder to process. Avoid them, or take them on and help the person process it. Often they dont know WHY they feel a certain way. If you stress them, that emotional ball gets bigger, and it gets harder to change their mind
Let them have time to process the information, and thus know how to feel about it. Different people needs different amount of time or space.
Expand their knowledge and experiences and appearences, DONT contradict them. Let them get a way to explain and predict their reality better.
Also, make them feel like its ok to disagree or not get you, and that you dont think they are dumb. This reduces the chance they go into fight or flight mode.
All this isnt a guarantee, but works well in my experience. It is cognitively demanding on at least one party though.
You believe that people/humans have an innate moral sense and sensibility?
I mean that makes sense given your focus on appearances, but also i thought you think humans are naturally selfish and evil?
Also, maybe this is because of my autism and my experience growing up gay, atheist and such in a mormon envirement: but different people and groups, altough they MOSTLY have similar moral intuitions and worldviews, can have totally different intuitions and beliefs.
This seems to happen even without any thought viruses or enviremental push at all. Inless the people involved put a huge effort into communication and understanding each other, we can literally have different ideas of what even works or not, much less what is moral
And i know that you dont think morality being inconsistent is a death sentence or such for intuitions, but peoples beliefs seems wildly contradictory to me at times, even withing themself in the same situation
It might be that my autism means i have a worse sense to just see the social aura of a group, and thus not get the same appearance as everyone else.
An aside: how does status quo bias and such affect the thought crime idea you talk about here? I suspect that status quo bias and agreeableness/not wanting conflict or differences in the group is a big contributor to thought viruses and tribalisms
Mormons dont believe in hell and believe that you can accept god in heaven. But that you need a earthly body to have change in you, because basically only material things really change to a meaningful degree
So thats why we have baptism for the dead: basically the dead person is borrowing the earthly experience of being baptised, and can thus go to heaven
The reason that we have earthly life would be that because we change much more with a body, that we can actually grow here but not grow in heaven as much.
A comparison would be that no matter how nice your hotel room is, you cant learn how to bike if you dont have a bike and open space to do it
"We have a natural, genetically based tendency to share our beliefs with each other". There is a distortion here....some of the 'we' are far more likely to be stridently opinionated than others. Most well-adjusted people are not forever at it (spouting their beliefs) because it can get tiresome. And the age of mass media has massively amplified this asymmetry. It has afforded the one-track-minded, obsessive malcontent (grievance-filled gender dysphoric or race hustler etc) a hugely over-sized influence on our 'democracy'. And these are the same people who have brought Orwell's thought crime concept to our '2023' dystopia.
Perhaps there remains a mystery about Christian belief because you haven't engaged with it very deeply - as shown by the contrasting of faith and evidence/proof. Simply consider all the types of evidence the people in Hebrews 11 received, and yet they are commended for their faith. Clearly, faith is not merely something to be exercised in the absence of evidence.
> The official theory is not that you’re sent to hell for disbelief, but that you’re sent to hell for all your sins; it’s just that you can’t be forgiven for those sins unless you actively accept God’s forgiveness, which requires you to believe that God exists. It remains a mystery why you should not be able to accept that forgiveness after God proves to you that he exists.
There's nothing saying you "should not be able to accept that forgiveness after God proves to you that he exists".
In fact, it's the acknowledgement of an accountance with god and the holy that is supposed to drive people into faith in traditional christianity, not some supposed blind faith. This can range from being illuminated and sensing a spiritual presence all the way to talking to an angel or similar physical manifestation or witnessing a miracle (which in traditional Christianity aren't constrained to the select ones mentioned in the New Testament, but happen to common everyday people too).
Fascinating. An analogy that comes to mind is that most people that are trying -- and largely failing -- to reduce the size and power of government are akin to doctors hundreds of years ago before the germ & virus theories of disease.
Potential biological analogs for other treatments:
1. Physical aversion and barriers to mind viruses, i.e. physically not listening to or watching mind viruses. That includes some news, social media posts, movies, television, books, etc., but it might also include physically removing oneself from people that are talking about bad ideas in the same way that if I was at a party and someone looked sick and was coughing, I might politely walk away.
The healthiest action would probably be to build a mental muscle of quickly determining what might be a mind virus, so that we're not totally closed to hearing new ideas, but we minimize infection risk.
2. Mental exercise to build the immune system as with physical exercise. Perhaps creating a mental workout routine for people that helps them reason, and, more specifically, help build the mental muscle of quickly determine what might be a mind virus.
3. A social immune system. Perhaps the smartest folks like yourself can build an online database of what are likely to be mind viruses in the same way that Wikipedia has a list of viruses. That could include a description of why it's a virus along with potential treatments, etc. People could then consult what might be a mind virus. This could also include example pictures of symptoms and videos of symptoms of when someone may have a mind virus (yelling emotionally, etc.).
4. A list of mental antiviral treatments and mental vaccines such as a list of books, videos, etc. showing how to reason and showing problems with specific mind viruses.
5. Rhetorically, switching to arguing at a meta-level about the fact that the person has a mind virus (and the evidence for this, rather than just an ad hominem) rather than allowing the mentally infected individual to control what is being argued about. A related quote from Kierkegaard; by analogy, why should we be allowing diseased individuals control the topic of conversation?
"People do not know what they ought to say but only that they must say something. It is one thing to be a physician beside a sickbed, and another thing to be a sick man who leaps out of his bed by becoming an author, communicating bluntly the symptoms of his disease. Perhaps he may be able to express and expound the symptoms of his illness in far more glowing colors than does the physician when he describes them; for the fact that he knows no resource, no salvation, gives him a peculiar passionate elasticity in comparison with the consoling talk of the physician who knows what expedients to use."
I know the meme and mind virus ideas aren't particularly new, but the power of your argument really calls for a totally new social science sub-field!
The sickness analogy seems weak. What is the analog to the situation where an idea looks questionable, but is actually worthwhile? Is there a situation where in retrospect, we wish we had gone and given the coughing person a kiss? Cowpox I suppose. We have not encountered many diseases that delivered benefits, but many heretical ideas have done so.
In biology terms, it seems generally important to have some exposure to mild viruses to build our immune system by activating it and generating immunological memory so that if we are exposed to a larger dose or a worse strain, we might better deal with that using memory B & T cells.
By analogy, it might be good to get a small dose of mind viruses to understand the techniques they are using to try to invade our minds so that, in the future, our mental immunological memory might defend us against more clever demagogues, for example.
1, 3, and 5 are used by the infected to maintain their infection.
If someone could investigate thoroughly and come to a conclusion that P, but didn’t, remained with ~P, did something on the basis on ~P and bit was bad, but he was instrumentally rational not to investigate, could we blame him for his action?
Thought experiment — you know that in next year god will choose one human randomly and ask them what to do regarding some controversial topic (e.g. what to do with climat crisis)
If you are a random person, almost surely you won’t make any more difference than you make voting in the US, so instrumentally you are justified to default mode on this and not do any further research
Seems like that’s not worthy a blame
Also, in the previous case it seems quite weird that intuitions about whether it’s okay to blame person in question change not only because of one’s decision to investigate or not, but also because of whether one is actually chosen by god to make the call.
No, you wouldn't be blameworthy for not doing research, not knowing that you would be chosen. However, you also should not form strong opinions on climate change in the absence of evidence; you should withhold judgment. And once you find out that you're chosen, you should try to do as much research as possible to find out what the best policy is.
Many people appear to have strong opinions about many controversial issues, without knowing much about them, and many try to persuade other people of those opinions, go to protests, etc.
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard tells a story about a madman who escapes from an asylum, and he realises that if he just says mad stuff people will quickly figure out he's an escaped lunatic and they'll send him back. So he decides he's only going to say true, uncontroversial things. And when he goes into town, to everyone he meets he says "The world is round." That's all he says to anybody. And it's true. The world is round. But they quickly realise he's mad and lock him up. And what Kierkegaard was saying is that you can have all the facts and all the truths and still be wrong, because you haven't appreciated the context in which those facts matter.
When you state some fact, inference to best explanation tells me that you care about it, that you consider this information to be important, valuable, action-guiding.
Now some facts, in most ordinary contexts, have only (or mostly) evil utilities, which is why, for instance, you don't say "you are dumber than me" to your colleague who has worse grades, nor do you say "you are fat" to someone who is overweight, nor do you say "your mom is dead" to an orphan boy, nor do you say "my son is hiding in the attic" to the killer (unless you are Kant).
You need a very good reason in order to say a hurtful fact, but people don't usually have one. The guy being insensitive is sometimes promoting a supremacist agenda, no matter how factual (and often it isn't even factual). So it is the case that this guy should be repreended.
Finally, lets make it clear that only a mindreader can punish you for crime thoughts... but it isn't a crime THOUGHT anymore after you SAID it, is it?
Btw, thanks for the reflections, Michael Huemer! I am left-winged as you can probably tell, but I'm actually your fan and I hope this comment sounded dialectic, not hostile or something.
Cheers
Interesting posts, thank you. The Kierkegaard anecdote was perfect. Two thoughts: Not talking about facts that might hurt someone‘s feelings might make some people who hear them for the first time combined with the ominous „this is what they don’t want you to know“ very vulnerable to undesirable ideologies (like „Supremacy“). We can only grow if we accept to learn something we dislike (about ourselves or about our „group“) every now and then. Also: Obviously „thought crime“ refers to thoughts that others can hear or read. You seemed to imply that you were making a point, but I fail to see it.
Hi, Uta! The point of this specific phrase was that after one says or writes something, even if it is true, he/she becomes a candidate for reprehension/punishment and this shouldn't be seen as "being punished for thinking something", which would be too much in my opinion.
This is being punished for doing things with words. Like in the Kant's situation: after you tell the killer "Hey! The guy you're searching for is hiding in the attic!", you had a causal role in his death. Maybe you shouldn't be guilty of murder, but it's legitemate that people reprehend you.
Of course, in some cases, the benefits outweigh the harms. But not always, so we must be vigilant and discerning.
I don't think not talking makes people more vulnerable to supremacist ideologies. What makes them vulnerable is an 'ought', not an 'is'. To be more precise, what makes them vulnerable is capacitism.
If you don't see having lower IQ as undesirable, we can all share our IQ scores and be happy with our inevitable differences together and grow(?) accepting the facts. Someone or some group has to be below average. That's simply how averages work.
But if you do see having lower IQ as undesirable, then I'm justified in not wanting you to know mine or my group's anymore, because you might start thinking of "solutions" to this "problem", and some solutions require me being denied a part of society. Maybe people won't want me to reproduce, for instance.
Hi and thank you for answering. Your example of „reprehensible speech“ is solid and fulfills the criteria for a “speech act”. The examples I had in mind were more along the line of opinions considered undesirable by an ideology driven group along the lines of the example given in Huemer’s text. As far as the “group differences in IQ” are concerned, I agree that the subject is poisonous and as long as the cultural differences between groups (value assigned to the idea of getting an education etc.) explain most of the differences, I also see way more harm than (if any) benefit in pushing it. When I mentioned people who only ever heard of one side of an issue being more vulnerable to persuasion when they hear facts that seem to contradict the world view they learned, I was mainly thinking of conspiracy theories.
> Are there any thought crimes recognized by conservatives? Certainly there are thoughts they would disapprove of and whose expression would anger them — say, the thought that the United States is evil and a valid target for terrorist attacks. But it’s rare for conservatives to call for punishing someone for thought crime.
Rare? When conversatives have (or had) the upper hand, it's not rare at all. From attacking those who advocated for abolitionism back in the day, to asking for the firing (or worse) of communists and "fellow travellers", to asking for punishment such as boycotts and cancellations for artists who spoke up against Bush's wars, and so on. Hoover and McCarthy sure weren't leftists.
> Anyway, in all of these cases — wokism, Marxism, Christianity, Islam — it is simply ridiculous to claim that anyone who investigates sufficiently carefully and thoroughly will agree with the belief system.
Considering that some of the greatest thinkers have "investigated" and agreed with each of those belief systems, that's simply stating the author's prejudices (or those of his society or peer group) as fact.
Or it's the author abusing the terms "sufficiently carefully and thoroughly" to allow himself to move the goalposts as needed (such that, anybody who studied those things deeply, and is well read, and educated, and with high IQ etc, but still agrees with one of those, can be said to "not have sufficiently studied it". In other words, sufficiently here meaning basically "agrees with the author").
<When conversatives have (or had) the upper hand, it's not rare at all. From attacking those who advocated for abolitionism back in the day, to asking for the firing (or worse) of communists and "fellow travellers", to asking for punishment such as boycotts and cancellations for artists who spoke up against Bush's wars, and so on. Hoover and McCarthy sure weren't leftists.>
Yes, there is a cancel culture among the right (although the left/right spectrum is a myth--see Bryan Caplan’s recent Substack posts). Communists were fired from government because they were a security risk (as revealed by the Venona project); they were fired from universities because they weren’t free to teach the truth (they were subject to the party line--see Sidney Hook’s monograph _Heresy Yes, Conspiracy No_); they were blacklisted by Hollywood because they were a financial risk and tried to sneak in communist propaganda into films (although this probably wasn’t a big problem). Unfortunately, there were miscarriages of justice and perhaps the blacklist was one. Also, communists were happy to blacklist and even jail Trotskyists and anti-communists.
I think the argument that believing, e.g., that "transwomen aren't women" is bad has quite a few points in its favor.
If I have trans friends and know one person who believes that "transwomen aren't women", I might not want to be their friend because they might be rude to my trans friend.
Often, beliefs come in bundles, and even if "transwomen aren't women" is a purely metaphysical claim, it often comes bundled with other beliefs such as that trans people shouldn't have certain rights, they don't need or deserve certain protection, etc. One could imagine a trans person being very annoyed that they aren't allowed to join some organization, or maybe they were disowned by their parents.
And now if they meet a person who believes "transwomen aren't women," it might be pretty safe to assume they are not against their parents kicking them out.
Imagine you met someone, and you tell them you were kicked out by your parents for some non-trans reason. And they respond, "Nice, I think it's good they kicked you out". That would seem pretty rude. And there are plenty of beliefs that are mostly bundled up with other "rude" beliefs like that.
The mechanism described at the end basically worked for me with religion, specifically learning about cultural evolution by reading Hayek.
I don't know how many people with ideological 'no-go zones' have the full thought crime package though. The desire to suppress other's speech / and thoughts seems like an extension of the strategy that only works in an environment where the ideology is already dominant and funtions to cement it's dominance.
I really like what you say and I'm able to look past the clearly conservative bias. I'd love to share this with some liberal friends but I'm doubtful most could focus on the best parts of what you say, even if the biases make only a small and relatively unimportant appearance. With that in mind, there are a few things I wish were revised.
1 By far the biggest is that you start your examples with Wokeism. This is too much in their face. It would be far better to start with religion, especially given, as you say, that's where more formal versions of thought crime got its start.
2 While Marxism is a good example I think you miss a lot by not including McCarthyism. I think McCarthyism has more and better parallels to convince someone on the left of why Wokeism belongs on this list.
3 I like the examples of trans and intelligence but worry these are too much in liberals' faces. I'm not sure what would be better examples though. One example might be a belief in how our climate will change due to GHG increases. Again pretty much in their face. Maybe how resistance to the Covid vaccine shifted from liberals to conservatives as it shifted from Trump's to Biden s. IDK
I like to think about our beliefs and actions as ways yo handle a huge overwhelming reality. And that while our ling term memory can be limitless, that our working memory is highly limited.
So people can USUALLY just take in so much information at a time. Lets say they can handle 7 bits of information, that then needs to be digested and is integrated into our long term memory. Or worldviews/beliefs
When people are stressed, we literally often get tunnel vission, and that amount of bits is reduced to 5, or 3. At minimum, we become less open to new information and things to process.
Emotionally charged things often becomes a lot bigger then when they arnt emotionally charged, because aside from just the subject, we also have other bits that has to be handled, like our stress, others feelings, etc.
So its very easy for an emotionally charged thing to become SO CHaRGED that unless you break it down, or the person trusts you, that it automaticlly become too large for their working memory to handle
How we present things and teach them also affects how well the person can absorb it
A good teacher often knows how to make the large thing smaller and digestable, and to portion it out. That way the pupil can gradually absorb it all into their long term memory.
But a bad teacher, or honestly most people, dont have a good idea of what they even want to say exactly, and then it becomes emotionally charged and large and convulsted and too much for the other persons working memory to handle, and stress kicks in and likely fight or flight response.
Another part of all this is as you get to become an expert in something, you can start dividing the loads of bits into “chunks” that means you dont have to overload your working memory the same way. This is actually what memory experts do.
A beginner or someone unused to an idea on the other hand often have no idea how to do chunkifying and all that.
This is one reason why conflict can arise between an expert and beginner: fhe expert overloads the beginners brain, and makes them stressed, then the beginner feels stupid. And the beginner doesnt like feeling stupid so if they can, they accuse the expert of being biased and thus low status.
As for ways to handle this:
(This is all from the perspective of changing ONE individuals mind btw: a whole culture is a different matter)
Being pedagogical and a clear thinker and teacher. Knowing how to explain the thing
Know how to portion it, do not overwhelm them
Remember that you likely have a ton of shorthands that they dont. So as an example, to convince a socialist, dont go saying “FREEDOM”.
Start with the basics, then when they have absorbed that, maybe a chunk or two
Be considered someone worthy of respect and listening too, and that you have their best interest in mind. This makes them less stressed and increases their working memory.
Remember that emotional subjects gets larger and harder to process. Avoid them, or take them on and help the person process it. Often they dont know WHY they feel a certain way. If you stress them, that emotional ball gets bigger, and it gets harder to change their mind
Let them have time to process the information, and thus know how to feel about it. Different people needs different amount of time or space.
Expand their knowledge and experiences and appearences, DONT contradict them. Let them get a way to explain and predict their reality better.
Also, make them feel like its ok to disagree or not get you, and that you dont think they are dumb. This reduces the chance they go into fight or flight mode.
All this isnt a guarantee, but works well in my experience. It is cognitively demanding on at least one party though.
You believe that people/humans have an innate moral sense and sensibility?
I mean that makes sense given your focus on appearances, but also i thought you think humans are naturally selfish and evil?
Also, maybe this is because of my autism and my experience growing up gay, atheist and such in a mormon envirement: but different people and groups, altough they MOSTLY have similar moral intuitions and worldviews, can have totally different intuitions and beliefs.
This seems to happen even without any thought viruses or enviremental push at all. Inless the people involved put a huge effort into communication and understanding each other, we can literally have different ideas of what even works or not, much less what is moral
And i know that you dont think morality being inconsistent is a death sentence or such for intuitions, but peoples beliefs seems wildly contradictory to me at times, even withing themself in the same situation
It might be that my autism means i have a worse sense to just see the social aura of a group, and thus not get the same appearance as everyone else.
An aside: how does status quo bias and such affect the thought crime idea you talk about here? I suspect that status quo bias and agreeableness/not wanting conflict or differences in the group is a big contributor to thought viruses and tribalisms
A bit irrelevant to note but on christianity:
Mormons dont believe in hell and believe that you can accept god in heaven. But that you need a earthly body to have change in you, because basically only material things really change to a meaningful degree
So thats why we have baptism for the dead: basically the dead person is borrowing the earthly experience of being baptised, and can thus go to heaven
The reason that we have earthly life would be that because we change much more with a body, that we can actually grow here but not grow in heaven as much.
A comparison would be that no matter how nice your hotel room is, you cant learn how to bike if you dont have a bike and open space to do it
Mormon theology is kinda wild in general.
"We have a natural, genetically based tendency to share our beliefs with each other". There is a distortion here....some of the 'we' are far more likely to be stridently opinionated than others. Most well-adjusted people are not forever at it (spouting their beliefs) because it can get tiresome. And the age of mass media has massively amplified this asymmetry. It has afforded the one-track-minded, obsessive malcontent (grievance-filled gender dysphoric or race hustler etc) a hugely over-sized influence on our 'democracy'. And these are the same people who have brought Orwell's thought crime concept to our '2023' dystopia.
Perhaps there remains a mystery about Christian belief because you haven't engaged with it very deeply - as shown by the contrasting of faith and evidence/proof. Simply consider all the types of evidence the people in Hebrews 11 received, and yet they are commended for their faith. Clearly, faith is not merely something to be exercised in the absence of evidence.
> The official theory is not that you’re sent to hell for disbelief, but that you’re sent to hell for all your sins; it’s just that you can’t be forgiven for those sins unless you actively accept God’s forgiveness, which requires you to believe that God exists. It remains a mystery why you should not be able to accept that forgiveness after God proves to you that he exists.
There's nothing saying you "should not be able to accept that forgiveness after God proves to you that he exists".
In fact, it's the acknowledgement of an accountance with god and the holy that is supposed to drive people into faith in traditional christianity, not some supposed blind faith. This can range from being illuminated and sensing a spiritual presence all the way to talking to an angel or similar physical manifestation or witnessing a miracle (which in traditional Christianity aren't constrained to the select ones mentioned in the New Testament, but happen to common everyday people too).
So no mystery.