Ignorance looks like a fire. It looks like it can quickly spread if you don't work to extinguish it.
But ignorance is a mold. It spreads slowly. You can clear up a spot, but that doesn't address the problem. You need to dry out the room.
I don't agree with this analogy at all. You are characterizing ignorance as a substance that propagates under certain conditions while I see ignorance as an absence of something, that something being knowledge. The default state of a room is to be moldless, but ignorance is the default of humanity. One is born in this world ignorant of language, social norms, basic arithmetic, even the knowledge of walking. The only way to dispel ignorance is to pursue knowledge. But this quest is ultimately a futile one. The rate in which articles are being published in academic journals is greater than the rate in which one can consume them. Now, more than ever, it is impossible to know everything. But just because the quest is a futile quest doesn't mean that it is a meaningless one. I cannot articulate this feeling well, but I believe that the pursuit of knowledge should be done for its own sake.
Is the default state of a room to be moldless? (I have lived in more than one house whose primary "shower" bathroom did not have ventilation. Without that ventilation, either mold would grow, or a window had to be kept permanently open. In this metaphor, what could water/moisture represent - keeping in mind that water is of course essential for all life.)
Is the default state accurately described as a room - a construct?
I think that ignorance predates our modern standards of building.
Total, complete knowledge is a futile quest, but the lack of ignorance is an achievable thing - as your examples, I think, illustrate. We mostly all learn to walk, after all.
I would like to ask, since we seem to disagree and I would like to give you an opportunity to express what you feel which mk's anology doesn't, what you think would be an appropriate analogy for ignorance.
I would like to not believe that ignorance is our natural state because I would like to believe that we as humans are not born hating each other. The ignorance being addressed here is not, I think, just simple lack of education. I think what mk is indirectly referencing is honestly more learned laziness or encouraged perceptions of "inherent difference." But I would like to hear what you think.
- I would like to ask, since we seem to disagree and I would like to give you an opportunity to express what you feel which mk's anology doesn't, what you think would be an appropriate analogy for ignorance.
Meh, just your typical boring "ignorance is a fog/darkness and knowledge is the light that shines through the fog/illuminates the darkness" analogy. I suppose I should credit mk for at least coming up with an original analogy.
- I would like to not believe that ignorance is our natural state because I would like to believe that we as humans are not born hating each other. The ignorance being addressed here is not, I think, just simple lack of education. I think what mk is indirectly referencing is honestly more learned laziness or encouraged perceptions of "inherent difference." But I would like to hear what you think.
I guess I don't know what to think if mk is indirectly referencing something that I'm not aware of, and I don't want to put words in his mouth.
- Meh, just your typical boring "ignorance is a fog/darkness and knowledge is the light that shines through the fog/illuminates the darkness" analogy.
mk's moldy ignorance that looks like fire has some of that quality.
No. Ignorance is a thing that is taught. People are taught to embrace ignorance. It is embraced when people are encouraged to give equal weight to fact and opinion. Ignorance spreads when people are subject to noxious falsehoods like racism to the point that they start to accept them and ignore reality.
What you're talking about is naivety. The state at which one is most susceptible to ignorance.
- Ignorance is a thing that is taught. People are taught to embrace ignorance. It is embraced when people are encouraged to give equal weight to fact and opinion.
What you're describing is anti-intellectualism. Which is related, but distinct from ignorance itself.
I don't follow your definition of ignorance. There are plenty of things I am ignorant in: how to build a house, how to read War and Peace in the original Russian, how to integrate using anything other than a Riemann integral. The default state is for me to not know these things. Yes, I get why people would be mad if one were to be proud of not knowing what a Lebesgue integral is, but the celebration of ignorance is different from ignorance itself. In other words, ignorance is not bad per se; it's just a default state one would hopefully grow out of.
tla's definition of ignorance is about living in a bubble. It's when you haven't read War and Peace in Russian (and French: let's be frank, the book is at least quarter foreign) and are proud of it, or don't care to read it despite being a self-professed bookie because it's so damn big and you don't want it and you have other things to do instead bla bla bla...
It's fine not to read it, I suppose, but if you enter an argument about Russian literature later on (or Tolstoy's literary works, even), you'll be out of your field; if you then presume that you ought to partake in the argument because you're you and because you want it (despite having little to know knowledge on the subject), you're partaking in willful ignorance, shielding yourself from the idea that you can't know everything and/or things that you ought to know about by now.
At least, that's how I understand what tla meant. Maybe that's what mk meant, too.
Well, I mean there is a difference between ignorance and anti-intellectualism. Sure, I can get behind anti-intellectualism being a form of cultural decay that will spread unless we do something about it. But anti-intellectualism isn't ignorance. And I don't think anti-intellectualism is exclusively prideful, willful, self-aware ignorance either. It's also a strange form of intellectual hubris, as if spending 5 minutes reading some shitty blog makes them an authority of X over an entire community of academics who have devoted their entire lives towards X.
Now we've got more definitions confused than we should. Let me quote Wikipedia:
- Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and contemptible.
How willful it is is a question that must be asked first towards similar beliefs, such as racism and misogyny: do people take on those, or do they imbibe them as their own from their surrounding? From the answer to that question stems the answer to whether it is, or can be, self-aware or prideful, and from those - whether it is ignorance (willful ignorance, in this case).
Whether it is, people still hold onto them without giving them a good critical look. That constitutes ignorance in my book.
Do you think there's some innate aspect to ignorance? We're born having no idea about the world, after all. Besides, many people grow comfortable with ignorance when the stress is growing - is it accepting the "lesson" the world "teaches" such people, or is it accepting the internal feeling of the pink bubble?
If babies had no idea about the world, they'd not cry for food, or comfort, or attention, or whatever the hell else babies get upset about. They get upset because their ideas are in conflict with what is reality.
Children are often taught to shy away from things which the parent doesn't want them to learn about. Think the kids who are forbidden from learning science. From learning factual things that make the actual world they live in. They are taught that they may substitute opinion for fact. That choosing to believe a fiction about something outranks fact about it. They have been influenced and trained by anti-intellectualism to live a ignorant existence and believe that they are the enlightened ones.
- If babies had no idea about the world, they'd not cry
They don't cry because they think "Well, I'm hungry. Let's cry and see if anyone hears me! Maybe they'll bring me food, too". They follow their instincts; it's later in life do they learn that they can eat on their own if they know there's food around. You'd cry of pain if someone was to stab you in the leg, and it doesn't matter if you know or have shielded yourself from knowing who stabbed you or what did they stab you with. Instincts and reflexes have nothing to do with ignorance, other than the fact that we can learn to override them if we find out why it might be useful to us.
I agree with most of the second paragraph.
In terms of this metaphor, I'd say that "drying the room" means creating an environment in which ignorance is not normal, or acceptable.
As per Asimov's observation :
- Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Well you see, it helps to be very, very salty.
(this is mostly a joke; "salty" in slang means "full of attitude" while at the same time actual salt kills slugs and other permeable membrane and would-be fields of things (snails; plants) cuz it's all drying, you see.)
Metaphorically, "dry wit" is a form of sarcasm. Being "salty" is also accepted to mean "being bitter" or "full of attitude." I believe that sarcasm can be taken as an example of either trait.
When you have attitude, metaphorically it could be "drying" to ignorance-aka-mold because when poor or invalid arguments are offered forth in comment threads, but then countered by educated, vehement, I-am-not-going-to-take-your-shit-because-no-you-don't-deserve-the-benefit-of-the-doubt responses, I think those responses will often be recognized by the community as apt, just, and even deserved. As a result they will be somehow illustrated as superior to the moldy comment, whether in upspokes, gold/gilding/whatever, upvotes, etc. And when it becomes clear to a user that the community is overwhelmingly against him, which is usually best shown by solidarity for the other option/viewpoint, he suddenly tends to shut up. And even if he doesn't, the demonstration of where the general community's opinion lies allows other, future readers to realize that just because the comment's there doesn't mean anyone agrees with it. in that way, I would say that salt/attitude prevent the growth of mold/ignorance.
Someone who I respect once told me that I "had never been too nice." I guess I have an acerbic reputation. But the truth is that this is not true. The truth is that in the past, I have been far too nice to people and given them far too many chances, far too much benefit of the doubt, and doing so - repeatedly, because I am an optimist - over time has caused me harm.
These, as well as the word "nice" and the heavy pressure society exerts on people to be "nice," are ways that people manipulate others, making people feel bad because they are not going along with the other person.
I think some people bank on the "well you should have been nice nyah nyah" argument to derail from the actual argument.
It does not behoove me to be nice when someone is, in my opinion, blatantly wrong. When someone in your proximity, someone you allow around you, expresses something that opposes your own beliefs, if you do not speak up, that person will think not only that it's okay to say those things but that you either don't mind or tacitly agree with them. The people around you who associate you two will believe this too if you do not speak up. If I have a friend who is a terrible sexist but we don't talk about it because "it's an emotional topic" and we'd rather not, well, guess what? Any time anyone sees me out with my friend and hears him say disgusting things is going to think the same. That is why I do not advocate for staying friends with someone if I disagree with them on social issues that I feel are a matter of basic human rights. It's okay if we disagree about vidjagames or some shit but not essential aspects of how people should be treated.
Attitude, confidence, the willingness and self-righteousness that it takes to speak up when you think you see something truly wrong being said - no they are not always flattering traits. Yeah you can look like an ass. You can be wrong sometimes or misconstrue. I don't care about that. I stand up in conversations like the one earlier because it is important to me to do so. It is important to me to say, "I disagree with this" because if I do not, or if someone does not, it's easy for the whole website to look racist. Or whatever. C'mon guys like this literal thing happened in practice: people kept complaining about racist users and how the site seemed racist. I mean I'm not falling for bait and once a user's shown his true colors I filter him and move on, but I will stand up in fresh conversations with fresh users at least once before I tune them out.
It is important to me to speak up over/in lieu of having happy happy peaceful interactions all the time. I stand up because it's not 8bit's job to deal with all of this shit, either. I stand up because I am trying to put my money where my mouth is and defend what I believe and support people like 8bit who have to deal with assholes constantly forcing him to have the same conversation about racism over and over and over again.
Sure i'm probably idealist and a white knight or some shit. I stand up because I won't shut up and put up.
But I am not tired enough that I will not stand up and say something.
I will never choose being polite over making my point when I am passionately convinced that I am right and the opinion being expressed against me is not only wrong but reprehensible. I don't know what the value is in being polite if it dilutes the point or allows others to avoid it.
Silence is so easy to mistake for agreement, or at least tolerance.
I feel like I pressed a button.
- I as a woman am told I should be polite instead of expressing myself
From my experience, it isn't because you're a woman - it's because you're perceived to suppose to be a nice gal, for one reason or another. I went through that, too: most people around me pressured me to be a nice guy because I hurt their feelings otherwise. I don't remember my childhood, but I guess I always liked being direct and honest, and people around me didn't dig it. I can only assume that it's mostly the same everywhere, though I can't deny that gender could play quite a bit into others' expectations of you.
Overall, I agree with you. "What could be expelled by the truth, should be".
Still, I have an issue, and I think you'll understand where I'm coming from: using "attitude" to describe a specific kind of attitude - boldness - and "salty" to describe acerbic expression of oneself.
The first one, in particular, drives me nuts: my narcissistic mother always used to push me to "behave" by asking angerly "Why are you acting this way?"; when I asked back "What way?", she always took a second or two before replying "...this way!", having absolute anxiety about expressing herself openly. To name it "attitude" is to give it a false name - a lazy name, a mental substitute for what is really meant, which goes against speaking one's mind.
As for "salty", well, I suppose we may be seeing it differently. I've grown used to seeing "salty" meaning "acting as a sore loser" (after one's ego been damaged in some way): backtalk, blaming everything but oneself for the results etc. You've already used the exact word to describe what you meant perfectly: "acerbic". "Acrid" is fine, too, and so is "acidic" (I have no idea why isn't it used more often). My point is - name things for what they are.
I've updated a little but don't feel like I swung my leg too far when hit by the hammer. ;)
My mom can't communicate either. Maybe it's a mom thing.
Salty, acerbic - I was stretching the metaphor.
I am sure there is a difference between boldly expressing one's opinion and doing so acerbic-ly. I would like to think that sometimes I manage to stay in the first.
I agree it is preferable even when disagreeing not to be mean, not to lose some of the strength of your point by slinging mud and throwing fits. But I don't think it's necessary to outright "be nice."
- but don't feel like I swung my leg too far when hit by the hammer. ;)
Could you elaborate on that? It's the first time I see such a sentence.
- My mom can't communicate either.
It's more than lack of communication, you see. Have you ever heard of what's it like to live with a narcissist?
- Salty, acerbic - I was stretching the metaphor.
I understand now. Does it mean that you agree with me on the current matter of names and words?
- But I don't think it's necessary to outright "be nice."
A skilled orator can use being nice - or, rather, non-confrontational - to the best of their advantage. People shield up when they hear something that sounds like an assault on their integrity; as such, appearing nice - that is, not disturbing others' worldview, but rather shifting it inch by inch through careful questions and statements - might be a weapon more powerful than an witty rant, in some situations.
Not that you have to be nice to people at all times if your point is to please them or don't let them frown from you expressing yourself. I mean to say that it's not all bad.
Only if one does not have much concern about preserving the room, though, yes?
Maybe fresh air. Idk, I have lived with houses not equipped for modern plumbing, i.e., bathrooms that had no ventilation or fans. Those were the ones that grew mold.
Vinegar helps. So might a dehumidifier (never tried it).
Unless the room is specifically built to prevent mold from growing, though, the answer is admittedly aggressive, repeated treatment.
I would not have set fire to the bathroom to get rid of the mold. In one house, we let it accumulate, and then scrubbed the bathroom clean occasionally; in my current house we leave a window open at all times for ventilation (though that impacts our AC costs, and I shudder to think what we will do in winter).
Yo so I'm a terrible lazy person and also mold makes me gag really easily and so does spoiled food, but if leftovers/whatever have been left in the fridge or on the counter (don't look at me, look at the open can of chicken broth my roommate has left out for like, over a week and probably going on two, man) long enough to be assuredly really disgusting, I have no shame: especially if I do not have a dishwasher I am more likely to toss the entire dish than wash it out. First, if you don't have a dishwasher it's likely you don't have a garbage disposal either, and that means your wasted moldly food scraps get real real real fast, and second, I'm convinced that i can't clean them well enough by hand without scalding temperatures to want to eat from that plate again.
So basically. In practice I totally agree. In theory I don't think I disagree either but I would argue slightly more for conservation just bc, you know, let's not waste.
But fuck no that tomato has mold on it the whole thing is going in the garrr-baahhhge.
Well, my comment could be interpreted to mean that I understand when mold or ignorance infects an object or thread or discussion topic or even website, sometimes certain people might choose to destroy or abandon the latter as a result of their innate repulsion to mold/metaphirc whatever.
So, I was telling a true story, but by telling it trying to say I understand why metaphorically one might take what would be essentially similar actions. Minus the literal fire part.
I think the meaning was, people are disgusted by mold/ignorance and may throw an infected thing out even if there are salvageable parts, but maybe that isn't ideal.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever and wisdom is knowing the difference.