Here is another one of Extradimensional Cephalopod‘s measured, rational, provocative and useful formula pieces. There’s a lot here: Hanlon’s Razor, marital advice, the flaws of presumed racism, weenyism…all in all, a top of the line Comment of the Day.
Here it is, in response to “Presumed Racism Raises Its Obnoxious Head at ‘Social Qs”‘…
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Alright, let’s break this down. Dealing with people acting unreasonable is what led me to learn deconstruction mindset. We can’t always take the easy way out by pretending people don’t exist. Sometimes we have to get constructive.
My values:
- Racists should have their views challenged. If I ran into an actual racist doing actual racist things, I’d ask incisive questions to deconstruct their whole paradigm.
- It’s more effective to assume a misunderstanding than malice. If it’s a misunderstanding, then it gets resolved normally with minimal fuss. If it’s malice, then the malicious people find themselves having to either spell out that they’re jerks or pretend to be incompetent, both of which have would tend to erode their arrogance. By assuming a misunderstanding we also get the opportunity to demonstrate that we are thoughtful and respectful people.
- I would like more people to make a habit of doing all of the above.
Others’ values:
- The inquirer’s wife doesn’t trust that other people might just have made mistakes instead of having ill will towards her. Perhaps due to past experiences, she has some reason to assume that they are more likely to be deliberately mistreating her.
- She doesn’t want to make the effort to find out for certain if her assumptions about others are correct. She apparently has a habit of avoiding interacting with people she suspects may be racist, because of the painful possibility of having to deal with an actual racist.
Framing the situation constructively:
- As much as I wish everyone would stand up for themselves and use deconstruction mindset to challenge suspected racist thinking and to give suspected racists the opportunity to show they were acting in good faith, it’s not fair to expect everyone to challenge themselves in such a way if they have reason to suspect it will be very stressful and not worth the effort.
- They will, however, have to accept the risk of cutting people out who were actually completely innocent.
- In this case, the easy answer is for the husband to figure out what happened. His wife has no obligation to spend effort and risk stress investigating, but she has no ethical right to demand that her husband not give others a chance to explain themselves to him. If he finds out that it was a misunderstanding, he can suggest to his family ways they can establish trust and demonstrate to his wife that they do care about her and are not racist. That shouldn’t be too difficult. If they care about her feelings, they will be interested in making her feel included in the family. Or maybe he’ll find out they really are racist. Wouldn’t that be important to know?
- Of course, the family has no obligation to make the effort to build that trust either, even if they’re not racist. If building trust requires too much effort or creativity, they might just decide the relationship isn’t worth it to them. They might have non-racist reasons not to like this person, although excluding her from photos still seems petty in most cases.
- That said, the initiative attribute of ethics (compassion) means realizing that although neither a traumatized person nor the people around them are obligated to make the effort to build trust, the situation won’t improve if nobody makes that effort.
Ethics Alarms 
a wise mentor of mine once taught me “once an asshole always an asshole.” I add, until proven else wise. Unfortunately, to date, no one has yet proven elsewise.
Most of those people are just upset or ignorant. Ignorance takes longer to fix, but either way they won’t get the opportunity to be better unless we show them how it’s done. Did you ever hear the “This is Water” speech by David Foster Wallace?
Your optimism and faith in human nature is a very endearing trait, and perhaps essential to avoid giving in to despair.I’m trying to think of prominent assholes throughout history and my experience who actually changed into non-assholes after the age of, say, 25. It’s a short list, perhaps because so many assholes are sociopaths or clinical narcissists.
History has some redemption stories. I’m not sure how you’re defining “asshole”, so I don’t know which stories would count for your purposes.
Part of my point is that a lot of people you’re branding with that label only appear that way in the situation you see them in. Others just don’t know another way to survive and would change given the option (and some prompting). Some people believe something very strongly, and they stand up for it in the same way you do, but you don’t believe in the same thing. Maybe we need to change how we act when we stand up for things.
The vast majority of people change their behavior at least a little bit in response to their environment, because not doing so is a good way to burn out. When we talk to people, we’re part of their environment, and so what we do influences that environment to an extent, especially when we get creative.
The trick is to avoid cornering people. If you give them a way out, an option that doesn’t look scary to them and lets them save face, then they’re surprisingly reasonable. If you don’t, then they’re more likely to act like jerks.
Empathy mindset recognizes that the way we interact with people influences what they show us of themselves, and how they present it. The same person can appear completely different in personality depending on how we approach them, and we might not realize it because the difference is based on experiences they’ve had that we can’t know in advance. We definitely won’t realize it if we assume that the way we approach people is always justified in all situations and other people are obligated to deal with us as we are.
For a long time, I was using the idea of objectivity as an excuse to express my own contempt for people. Gradually, I learned the art of deconstruction, to meeting people on their own terms and asking questions which lead to a more objective understanding. Done right, it allows us to learn from people we assumed had nothing to teach us, when they give us answers that we didn’t expect, but which still hold up to analysis. Often what we learn helps us find a path they’re willing to take that doesn’t continue to cause problems for others.
The constructive principle of ethics calls us to (where feasible) help create the conditions under which people can become better. Empathy mindset is one of the tools that lets us do that. It’s no less important or effective just because you know someone’s wrong.
Thanks, Jack! I hope the framework is proving useful!