Unfortunately, both low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse exist by design.
The only possible way to remedy this is to maximize your own ability to exert power, possibly by becoming massively rich, and then hope it doesn't corrupt you enough along the way such that you can still enact good in the end.
The more I learn, and the more versed I become with society, the harder and harder it becomes to see what is "good" and what is "bad".
The most confident I ever was that I was "obviously correct" was when I was 20.
Be careful. Some actors are deliberately muddying the waters of good and bad. For example, vaccines are pretty good, but some groups want you to be unsure if they're good or bad.
Precisely. Bad actors desire complexity because it leads to indifference. The “good” side therefore needs to fight that complexity with simplicity and empathy.
“Unions can be corrupt” or “You don’t need unions to get your voice heard” is the kind of rhetoric that leads to disinterest in unions over the years.
> Bad actors desire complexity because it leads to indifference.
This is an extremely dangerous idea without being counterbalanced by fact that reality is often complex and good actors want to be honest about it.
Bad actors desire confusion is closer to being accurate. But bad actors also often oversimplify to rouse people to some politically beneficial but ultimately harmful action.
It can go both ways. Bad actors can simplify because it leads to indifference, by way of generalizations. "black" = "bad", "illegal immigrant" = "gang member". It's how racism works.
> The “good” side therefore needs to fight that complexity with simplicity and empathy.
Empathy, yes. Simplicity doesn't normally lead to empathy; complexity does.
I read that left-wing people are consistently found to be much more able to process conflicting ideas than right-wing people are.
40 years of experience has taught me that absolutely no one is less able to process conflicting ideas than left wing people are, and it's not close.
Political extremes will be extreme. Centrists can hold both.
AFAIK this generally isn't true. About the centrists, I mean. Most self-identified centrists are just moderate right-wingers.
I think "unions are always good" is worse than "unions can be corrupt or good, here's how to push for good"
This reads somewhat like the older I get the less morals I have. If you have a hard time seeing the wild amount of bad in the world right now you're probably profiting from it in some way.
Or you lack perspective.
Also, it's not about not being able to see any bad, but some things that obviously seemed correct, stop seeming so obvious.
Reminds me of that clip where a man in some TV show gets slapped by the woman host and he slaps her back. Then a bunch of men from the audience come to beat him up. It's one thing to have the moral "never hit a woman" and "protect women", but if women abuse these views to mistreat and humiliate others without consequence, that doesn't seem right either.
It doesn't seem right for the men to have beat him up for defending himself. They thought they were being moral, but they weren't.
Sometimes moral views can require nuance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4akMaeZ0-k&t=58
That is a good example actually. The reason women are typically not as harshly criticized for hitting men is that they are almost certainly physically weaker. It's also the reason why men typically feel safe with a woman walking behind them in a dark alley while the other way around it's terrifying. That's not to say we shouldn't criticize the woman for hitting the man, just that men have the onus to show more restraint in such a situation.
Now for all we know the woman was physically stronger than the man in the instance you're speaking of (doubtful) and hitting her back wasn't that big a deal or even deserved. But as a societal norm we should be dissuading men from hitting women even if they're hit first otherwise you might often get a major injury in exchange for a minor sting. And it's a FAFO situation when you break these norms.
But I find it hard to see the nuance in much of the political nonsense going on right now (which is what I thought you were speaking of). Mass surveillance that doesn't seem to offer any security in return? Obviously bad. Things like measles, the screwworm, and cyclospora coming back due to political posturing or just plain ignorance? Obviously bad. Again I don't see how you could possibly be on the fence about a lot of the politics going on right now unless it's benefiting you in some way.
Not all politics mind you, I'm sure you can find some nuggets of good in there somewhere too. But if you're having a tough time determining the bad things currently as prices for everything are rising and the world is in constant turmoil I want whatever drugs you're taking.
Speaking of perspective and nuance: violent self defense is justified to defend one's safety. But a slap by, let's be honest, a relatively physically weak person is not a credible threat to safety. It's just an insult.
On the other hand, physical abuse of women by men is much more common and dangerous, and there's a utilitarian argument that society should treat it more harshly. Not saying the guys beating up the other guy were moral, but it's easy to argue they were closer.
> Unfortunately, both low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse exist by design.
Absolutely. Bread and circuses isn't a new idea.
>The only possible way to remedy this is to maximize your own ability to exert power, possibly by becoming massively rich, and then hope it doesn't corrupt you enough along the way such that you can still enact good in the end.
Points for the doing good in the end. But it's a rule in hell/serve in heaven issue, if you first need to create hell with your quest for power you have failed the objective of doing good in the end.
If you have a binary view, Good will always lose.
Evil can act Good, but Good cannot act Evil. Evil has that advantage over Good that cannot be matched.
This continuously plays out in our political systems. Good actors cannot fight the deluge of evil of their opponents, who are free to lie cheat and steal.
Good binds its own hands. For good to win, it must act with even greater evil. At which point, it becomes the very thing that it tried to defeat.
> Evil can act Good, but Good cannot act Evil. Evil has that advantage over Good that cannot be matched.
The assumption here is that being Evil is advantageous. It's obviously advantageous to personal gain, but the relevant thing is whether it's advantageous to staying in power, and then the system you want to design is the one where it isn't.
Notice also that it isn't binary. You can make it harder to be Evil and then have less of it even if you never have none.
This is assuming a short game. Defection over cooperation dominates short games, but evil can't trust evil in longer play. And I would hope that the default desire is a long game..
Tangent: I think this illuminates why I enjoy the “evil” route in many RPGs. My evil party doesn’t have to be moustache twirling. They can pick and choose their evil moments. But a good party feels more constrained.
Rarely a great RPG forces my good party to make difficult decisions.
Funny enough Mass Effect: Andromeda, which I never finished for obvious reasons, actually had a few few moments with pretty thick gray areas where I had to really sit down and think about my decisions. It’s interesting looking back and recalling that mess as one of the only strong examples.
My favorite was one of the KOTOR games where helping an NPC got you dark side points for taking the opportunity for the NPC to help themselves.
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. But there's a third option, too: to die a nobody.