When you practice Intellectual Hygiene, you regularly subject your views to critical examination. If you cling to the truth, you’re unafraid of the consequences of the challenge. In this episode of The Virtue Signal, we demonstrate the method.
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22 replies on “What If They’re Right? How to Practice Intellectual Hygiene by Challenging Your Own Views”
As for blacks going back to democrats …borrow from Evan Sayet. “Not only wrong but as wrong as wrong can be.”
This was an excellent Virtue Signal.
For 25 years I forced myself to listen to NPR’s Morning edition for this very reason. While I did learn interesting things like the differences in the composition of asphalt in the south compared to northern climates, what it did was piss me off. I finally left them for good when they gave voice to a BBC correspondent who was interviewing an uninsured girl with a family history of breast cancer who was afraid to go to the doctor, essentially shaming us for our unfair system. I tried to call the station to tell them that if that girl had breast cancer, even uninsured, her chance of survival was actually higher than those on the British public healthcare system at the time. Furious.
Good ol’ ideological Turing Test. It’s why I can make a better pro-choice argument than most abortion fanatics even though I’m pro-life. I think it’s an exercise that should be taught in high schools across the nation.
For the whole “opposite of right” thing, I like the term counter-right or counter-correct, based on the mathematical idea of counter-parallel – two vectors that run parallel, but have opposite directions (like travel lanes on a road).
You mentioned joining via a donation through PayPal. Here’s a link to an article that says PayPal is planning to fine you if you promote “misinformation,” in accordance with their vague definition of what misinformation is.https://www.westernjournal.com/account-close-immediately-company-debit-money-users-misinformation/
I’m cancelling my account with them,because I’m surely politically incorrect. And you are, too.
That’s why I dropped PayPal last week. It’s a shame that Peter Thiel is no longer running it.
Zo’s point that Blacks went back to the party which enslaved them reminds me of Prov 26:11 & 2 Pet 2:22.
Evan Sayet said something very similar to your ending point, Mr. Whittle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODXgGS50AVY
47min vid. Talks about why modern liberals are wrong. He did this over a decade ago for the Heritage Foundation.
Heidi – a lilttle over 5 years ago, Bill did a long form interview with Evan.
Don’t know if you saw that one. Might be interesting.
Here is a link to part 1 available only on this site.
https://billwhittlecom.wpenginepowered.com/after-hours-evan-sayet-liberals-in-kindergarten/
Ooh, I have not! Thank you, I’ll check it out.
There are some really good nuggets in some of those old shows and they are still behind the paywall. The 5 or 6 episode interview with Dave Rubin is really good.
I had the very same analysis for reparations that Bill discussed. Once the recipient has taken either the whole payment or the first installment (if that is how it ends up being paid), there can be no more discussion of racism – period, nada, the end. And if anyone anywhere among the recipients brings the topic up again, then that person and every other recipient has to give the money back!! Even if they have already spent it!!! As Bill framed it, they have violated the contract.
Human nature being what it is, Bill is right that it would never work in real world practice. Even if Thomas Sowell and a million other well off black people rejected the payment, some like Ibram X. Kendi, and others would reject it by saying the amount is not enough, no matter how high it was (within any realistic level).
Look at the modern left… they’ll take the money and still demand more. Truth has no meaning to them.
I remember Bill and the other discussing the reparations concept once before and that was his idea then too. The grievance pimps would have some issue or another with it and it would never come to fruition or be offered, because then they would be out of a job.
‘They’, the left wing, cannot be right because they are nihilist, they reject values as such, and they reject facts which clash with their ideology. The latest outbreak of discarding facts in favor of ideology, ‘Gender is fluid’, is an example of the sort of malevolent nonsense common to the left which allows them to use childhood fantasies as a demand to mutilate children. In effect, their entire approach to life, rejecting facts, rejecting reason, rejecting values as such, makes it impossible for them to be right.
Bill’s acting class story reminded me of when I was an OR nurse taking care of children. In preop, the child often went wild, fighting and crying. We would take the child down the hall towards the OR, leaving the parents upset. More often than not, once we were through the door into the OR proper, the child would settle down and start looking around.
For anyone who has not read “The Sword of Truth” series by Terry Goodkind, I highly recommend it. It not only highlights conservative values, it entertains, and gets you so involved with the characters that you want to hop into the story and defend them yourself! In the first book, “The Wizard’s First Rule” you learn the meaning of this rule.
The Wizard’s First Rule:
People are stupid. You can get anyone to believe anything you want them to believe as long as one of two things is true: they either want to believe it is true, or they are afraid it is true.
Some of the questions you asked hinge on the basis of the meaning of the word “Truth”. Terry Goodkind wrote the following words in a fantasy novel:
“Wizard’s Rule #6: The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.
The first law of reason is this: what exists, exists; what is, is; and from this irreducible bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. It is the foundation from which life is embraced.
Thinking is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts nor are they a means to discover them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality; it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss that we refuse to see. Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason’s light. In rejecting reason, refusing to think, one embraces death. Quoting Zedd: “…most important rule there is…The Sixth Rule is the hub upon which all rules turn. It is not only the most important rule, but the simplest. Nonetheless, it is the one most often ignored and violated, and by far the most despised. It must be wielded in spite of the ceaseless, howling protests of the wicked.”
― Terry Goodkind, Faith of the Fallen
I have to say, my ability to use reason and facts to explain the origins of the Universe is wanting. Reading Eric Metaxas’ “Is Atheism Dead?” will do that. Learning to deal with a crisis in things not being “reasonable” came much more easily reading Andrew Klavan’s “The Truth and Beauty”.
Sometimes reason appears to fail, but usually one of two other things are instead at fault… either you don’t know enough about the problem (why is this machine not working?) or you just don’t have enough information about the system (the start of the universe, etc).
Thank you, thank you! This is one of your very best offerings, gentlemen. It is honest, as always, but also full of delightful “light-bulb” insights I’d not summarized in my own mind. I’ve been a fan of Bill Whittle for years, and pleased to now know Zo, as well. Keep it up, please – we need the encouragement, the clarity, and the unassailable logic.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.