this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
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Yeah, but then I got interested again.
Yes. Like I said before, if I have no particular reason to trust you, then I'm not going to accept the information that you give me. I'm not sure why that's so persistently difficult to understand, or why you keep framing things in terms of you providing information that I am required to accept, and me making things difficult by examining it skeptically first.
You don't have to trust the OHCHR report, of course. Let me ask this: What sources would you trust? What can I refer to that you consider as a trustworthy source of information? That's why I specifically referred to globaltimes.cn above. But then, I have no idea if you trust them.
I just got tired of the conversation again.
You seem to be interested in talking about this, to some extent, but I'm not going to respond to general hints about what I might want to look at, or retreats into "do your own research"-type non-answers. If I'm making a claim, it's my duty to be willing to back it up instead of just sort of hinting.
You have a valid point that I've been ignoring things you've said or questions you ask. Are there any of the unanswered questions that you want me to take some real time and answer for you? Part of my not "getting with the program" so to speak, it seems, is like I say that I simply don't believe you based on my little bit of investigations so far, so I'm focusing my attention on seeing if you're trustworthy before taking anything of the very large and varied number of claims you're making seriously.
In your world, what does "read critically" mean? If testing some of the things from a particular source before you start to take it seriously isn't that?
I generally trust the OHCHR report, not because I automatically trust everything from the UN, but because it doesn't have any obvious inconsistencies with its sources and seems to draw on things that broadly match with what's broadly accepted by human rights NGOs, Wikipedia, news sources with a variety of allegiances, and so on. I went through some version of the process with it that I'm trying to do with you, and it didn't have sudden changes in its story, factual inconsistencies with other things that were trustworthy, suspect logical patterns, and so on.
Like I say, I think we're just at an impasse, because you're absolutely convinced that you've already done the critical reading, and I just need to get with that program and accept what you're saying. I don't think your reading of sources is as critically minded as you think it is. I think you've absorbed, and are trying to relay to me, a particular way of analyzing sources that I'm just fundamentally not on board for.
There's a very particular failure mode that the human brain can get into when "it's all propaganda" or "all their sources are biased" or corrupted by money, or whatever, start to become how you analyze sources. It starts to become very easy to just discard anything that doesn't match the picture that's already in your mind, and accept anything that matches the picture that's already in your mind, because you're defining the trustworthiness of the source in that sort of self-referential way. The way you talk about needing to "contextualize," and the way you allocate trust to different sources, makes me think you're unintentionally using that type of maladaptive pattern. Part of the reason I'm spending this length of time talking with you is that you do seem passionate about the truth, willing to invest energy into getting to the bottom of things, and so on. But I really think that you could benefit from some self-reflection about objectively, "Is this statement I am making true? Is this source trusthworthy?" before starting to go HAM with it, or uncritically accept other things from adjacent sources.
Does that make sense? Just my two cents, good luck with everything.
This is seemingly in response to me repeatedly noting your selective responses, but it doesn't address it at all.
I'm sufficiently bored of repeating myself. If you want to continue discussing this, you will have to quit the habit of only replying to 1/8 of what I say. Note that I asked you to identify your pattern of response and you, in now typical form, ignored that, too.
Edit: PS I'm not reading the rest of what you wrote until you can demonstrate basic good faith.
It absolutely addresses it. It explains why I'm doing it. You just don't like my explanation.
Okey dokey.
It obviously did not address the habit of ignoring most of what I say to you. I await your demonstration of good faith.
I don't really consider myself obligated to chase down each and every new thing you bring up in each message, investing hours of time absorbing your sources in detail while you airily discard any of my sources claiming that they are propaganda. But, like I say, it's not an unreasonable complaint, and if you want to bring up a couple of the unanswered questions now, I'm happy to spend a quick moment addressing them if you want.
The section you just quoted is several responses down, past what I said I would read. I'm not going to count this as a good faith response as it required you to make almost no attempt to read and understand a couple simple sentences.
You're free to try again.
I'll have to try to find a way to carry on regardless. Best of luck.
Thank you for this comment, it is an excellent demonstration of (boring) bad faith engagement.
My guy: You raised an issue with how I was participating. I explained why I was doing it, but also offered to correct it, admitting that you kind of had a point. You said you weren’t going to count that as good faith, but that I was “free to try again.”
I don’t know what sort of person you are trying to engage with, but it is some sort of obedient robot or sniveling quisling. I wish you luck in finding that person. They would probably also respond well to being told that it’s not your job to find sources for your statement, but their job to find sources for your statements. I think you will have difficulty in finding such a person but like I said I wish you luck.
I gave a reason for it, which you ignored to instead deflect and be flippant. Like I said, a great demonstration of bad faith. Excellent way to wrap this up.
PS this is the second or third time you have said you are done ans goodbye.
I engage very patiently. You were being irrational and combative from the very beginning, which is whete most people will write you off and maybe call you a name. Something I am sure you will repeatedly experience when you talk to someone that knows more than you about something. I then matched your tone to give you opportunities to reflect on that tone and progress via your apparently preferred form of discussion. This also did not work, as your selective engagement and preferenve for vaguely puffing up your "method" instead of directly discussing what was said results in either derailment or pointless repetition. Note that I still did not write you off over this period, as most people will do when met with such unserious arrogance.
I have now simplified it down to one thing: addressing, in good faith, the issue of highly selective responses so that we go in circles. And right off the bat you demonstrated that you didn't even read or think for 30 seconds about the simple couple of sentences I wrote. And even thrn, I gave you another chance, which you have now squandered.
I teach and screen people irl who are new to such topics on a regular basis. Nearly weekly. This requires a lot of patience, as many people learn to adopt opinions before they have done investigation ans they absorb these opinions into their idr tity, feeling attacked when contradicted and becoming combative. It is a common task to figure out who should be directly pipelined for the central education pathway and who needs to be isolated from it lest they become pointlessly disruptive to others' learning, as they have demonstrated that they will interrupt with silly ideas they have not really thought about or will double down on chauvinism, rather than engage in goos faith.
I have given you about as much patience as we give to a combative chauvinist, which is more than you will receive in pretty much any context outside of when someone is paid to interact with you.
It is literally not my responsibility to do that, yes. You seem to be very confused about this conversation and its commitments. Contrast our expectations. You expect me to fetch sources and explain and justify them to you while you make various silly allegations (e.g. surprise that I was critical of what I sourced for you) like this is some kind of debate and repeatedly act in bad faith. In contrast, I only expect you to respond germanely and accurately to what I say.
I recruit and onboard, in average, 2-3 people per week, and lead sessions of 10-30 every week. I have no problems whatsoever in doing so despite various personality conflicts, ranges of curiosity, and tolerance for arrogance.
Anyways, because you are not demonstrating good faith and are now making up a nonsense version of the kind of person you think I expect, and because you seem to want the last word regardless of how many times you say you are done and goodbye, I will help you out by ending this conversation and leaving you the last word.
And all of a sudden, it all snapped into focus.
I've been involved in education for almost all my adult life. The number of times I can remember having to do something like this is once, for one person, in all of that time.
Way up at the beginning, I said "In non-authoritarian contexts" certain modes of interaction are common, and you asked, "What on earth are you talking about." This is what I'm talking about. It's very strange and inhuman, to me, for the teacher to say that someone's ideas are silly, and for that reason they need to be removed from the class before they disrupt everyone else's "learning." One of the most important parts of teaching is understanding where people are coming from, actually truly coming from, so you can address their current perceptions directly, so they can understand. They might be right or partially right, they might be wrong, or they might be silly. It's fine. Another critical early stage of the process is to earn their respect, demonstrate that you know what you're talking about, so that in a genuine sense they'll want to learn from you. That can be incredibly hard, because there's not really a system for it. It has to be a human thing. If you can do that, though, everything after is easy. The students are coming to you because their current understanding isn't there, presumably, and because they want to fix that. If you can show them you're qualified to improve their understanding, then of course they will listen to you instead of being "silly" as you say it.
If you say something, and they don't understand it or don't agree with it, and then you abandon them and say they have to be separated before someone else hears what they have to say, that's a massive red flag to me. It might be for reasons of time or organization, you don't necessarily need to hear out completely every beginner idea that every single student has to say. But also... presumably, they're there because they have some interest in what you're teaching. Hopefully. If during the course of the interaction, they're espousing ideas you think are wrong, they're probably not the only person in the class that thinks that way. Some other people just might not be saying it. If you can address things in a productive way, then you give everyone else in the class the chance to hear out the exchange of ideas. That's hugely instructive. That's actual education. Hopefully, your ideas are solid enough and you have the skill to address it in a way where overall it's pretty clear that your ideas are the "right" ones. To everyone else, if not to the "silly" student, or not to them right away.
I don't truly know anything at all about your method of teaching. But like I say, this makes it all come clearly to me. You've been sort of giving me orders about how I am required to engage with you. You're trying to "instruct" me, which is a fine thing to do obviously, but you clearly haven't earned the right to do that, in my eyes. I was confused about why you kept approaching the interaction as if you had, and I needed to "get with the program" and treat you that way, but again, now it makes sense. You're treating me like one of your students.
Most people work in this way that I'm describing. If you want genuine respect from your students, you need to engage with them as human beings, and not become so aggrieved if they're not taking part in the process with completely correct ideas already formed, or with "correct" behavior already in place. Most people operate by respect, not by obedience, although certain types of coercion will cause them to obediently fake it. All you'll do by demanding obedience whether or not the respect is there, though, is produce insincere students, which is a terrible thing. And you'll also miss the chance to actually educate someone, if their inner ideas don't match the things you're trying to teach them.