Stefan Molyneux wrote (image attached to
https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/1017984286740434945) :
> We must debate or die
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> Our growing inability to speak and reason with those who disagree with us is threatening centuries of human progress
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> STEFAN MOLYNEUX
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> Humanity, it seems, is divided into two categories: those who embrace criticism, and those who attack it.
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> All progress comes from the former – who often have the dubious distinction of being hated by the latter.
Good point.
> Accepting criticism is a foundational act of humility; it is how we all learn.
Accepting criticism is not an act of humility. It's a sign of pride.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pride.html
> Children are corrected when they misspell a word, miscalculate a sum, or swing their tennis racquets badly. As a result, they improve.
Children, and people in general, don't improve *as a result* of being "corrected". (Often the "correction" itself is incorrect.) They improve as a result of coming up with solutions to their problems.
> Childhood is spent being corrected. That essential process, however, grinds to a halt for many adults, who imagine they are in possession of perfect knowledge and immune from criticism.
To an extent, young children have a better attitude towards learning than adults. A child learning to walk isn't afraid of the social consequences of failing over and over. A child learning to speak a new language isn't afraid of looking dumb by saying a word wrong. As kids get older, though, they are put under intense pressure to adopt anti-rational ideas that retard their learning.
> Of course, they are not in possession of perfect knowledge – but even if they were, why should they fear criticism? The best tennis player in the world should not fear the serve of a first-time player.
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> All our moral progressions – the roots and seeds of the modern world – arose from questioning the unquestionable.
Good point about the importance of questioning the unquestionable.
Using "progressions" as a plural of "progression" seems strange here, though. Maybe "advancements" would be better, or even just "progress", getting rid of the analogy of roots and seeds which itself seems a bit strange.
> Slavery was approved practice across the world for all of human history until the late 18th century, when the Abolitionists began to question the morality of owning people.
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> Mankind's position in the universe – on a planet orbiting a sun orbiting a galaxy that orbits nothing – was considered heretical for decades.
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> "Trial by fire" refers to a medieval practice of forcing a person accused of a crime to walk three paces holding a red-hot iron. If God healed his burns, he was innocent.
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> The modern judicial process of requiring evidence, letting the accused confront the accuser, a trial by a jury of your peers, access to a lawyer – all required the substitution of empirical mortal mechanics for murky divine feedback.
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> Since the tragically shortened days of Socrates, philosophers have hurled reason and evidence against the accepted beliefs of the time. Our most treasured beliefs must be subjected to rational arguments and empirical evidence – because so many treasured beliefs failed these tests in the past.
It's redundant to include both "rational arguments" and "empirical evidence". Evidence is part of reason.
> The wrenching expansions of morality beyond its original limits produces real progress.
Moral progress doesn't have to be wrenching, but yes, it is progress when moral rules intended to apply to people in general are actually applied to more people. I suspect Molyneux himself is unaware of how morality should be expanded to cover people of all ages including children.
> The end of slavery was the expansion of the ban on human ownership from whites to blacks. Men can enter into contracts: giving that capacity to women was a rational and moral extension of a universal right. Subjecting political elites to the rule of law, still a shaky proposition, was the extension of universal morality up through the ranks of power. Science rests on the proposition that the age of miracles is over.
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> Mankind strives to improve, then gets lazy and brittle. As a species, we have not reached the end of our moral progress – there are significant indicators we have gone in some very bad directions. Every moral advancement undermines the status quo, which produces a new status quo that opposes the next advancement.
The new status quo doesn't have to oppose the next advancement. Many moral advancements could be brought about peacefully, without "opposition", if people understood Paths Forward.
> I am concerned about free speech in the West – there is little point talking about it anywhere else.
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> Everywhere I go, even if people have a legal right to speak, they censor themselves for fear of being attacked, of losing careers, savings, relationships, families. They fear visits from the police. The interconnected web of conversation called the internet has been hijacked by malevolent forces threatening to disrupt and destroy our capacity to reason with one another.
The "interconnected web of conversation" is part of the internet but not all of it. The internet also consists of things like BitTorrent and Netflix which are not conversation.
> The span and potential of human communication currently hangs like the sun low on the horizon – it is impossible to know whether it is a sunrise or a sunset.
The sunset analogy seems odd. If the status of communication today is like a sunset, then the sun should have been much higher in the sky earlier in history. But Molyneux doesn't claim that that was the case.
Also, Molyneux doesn't say why it's "impossible to know" whether things are getting better or worse.
> We can finally speak with each other, all of us, around the world. Does that mean the world gets better or worse?
Being able to speak with each other around the world is a force for good.
> If we reason with each other, the world improves. If we smash conversations through threats, intimidation, violence and legalese, the world decays and darkens.
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> The last time humanity had a similar breakthrough in communications was the printing press, which resulted in the immense progress of the scientific revolution, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, but also, in places, totalitarianism and religious warfare.
The printing press didn't *result* in totalitarianism and religious warfare. That's like saying that guns *resulted* in murder. Totalitarianism and religious warfare have been common throughout history.
> The capacity to share ideas can produce either the American Revolution, or the French. The Bill of Rights, or the ever-thirsty guillotine.
It wasn't the capacity to share ideas that produced the French revolution or the guillotine. It was people's evil ideas. Evil ideas caused evil results throughout history, with or without the printing press.
> We will always have disagreements. How do we resolve them? We have only two choices – force, or debate. Civilisation is the substitution of conversation for naked violence. The moment we submit to reason and evidence is the moment we become – or stay – civilised.
I like those sentences (though again, evidence is part of reason; listing it separately is redundant). They remind me of how Rand says that man is a being of volitional consciousness.
> Many ideas offend many people. If we allow offence to silence debate, we elevate ignorant passions above reasoned discourse, and will lose the freedoms we have inherited – all the freedoms our ancestors fought, bled and died to hand to us.
Basically no one today explicitly claims that "offensive" speech should be censored. The far left claims that their problem with speech is that it is violence. Molyneux doesn't address that.
> The philosopher may not always be right, but the enraged mob is always wrong.
Another good point. Reminds me of Coulter's book Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.