“I’m just making observations, don’t blame me.”

I’ve encountered an interesting type of exchange and I’ve figured out what’s going on. 

Suppose someone makes a negative accusation of you without explaining how they came to their conclusion. You call them out on it. And they reply “I’m just making observations, don’t blame me.” What’s going on?

They're insinuating that their conclusions (aka "observations") are not affected by their thinking and instead they're getting their conclusions directly from reality. So they're saying that it's not their fault (not their responsibility) that they made those conclusions. They're saying that it's your fault that they made those conclusions. They're denying responsibility and they're trying to shift that responsibility to you. 

These are also the people that sometimes claim that "perception is reality", that if people perceive something, then that's what happened. But they don't apply this idea consistently. They only apply it when it's convenient for them, when it happens to agree with whatever bias is currently active in their mind at the moment. It's not a surprise that they don't apply this idea consistently, because it's impossible to apply consistently. Different people perceive different things, due to our fallibility and that we don't all make the same mistakes, we don't all have the same blindspots.

This is not how things work. They're contradicting basic things known about the scientific approach. All observations are theory-laden; our observations are affected by our interpretations of the sense data that we receive from reality. And those interpretations are affected by our ideas, which includes our biases. So if someone has a bias related to the thing they're "observing", and if they don't do all the necessary steps to combat bias, then their "observations" will be tainted by their bias.

This is a matter of honesty. People think honesty is a trait or something, but that's not true. Honesty is work. If you did the work, then you were honest. If you didn't do the work, then you were dishonest. What work? The scientific approach. Recognizing that you could be wrong and taking all the steps necessary to make sure you account for that possibility. It means giving explanations for your conclusions and submitting your explanations to criticism, your own and that of others (peer review). It means making sure to keep your conclusions tentative, always ready to receive new info and update your conclusions if warranted.

Forgive often

Forgive often. And better yet, don't even begrudge in the first place. You don't know what people are going through. You don't know why they made the decisions they made. You don't know how hard it is to live the life they live. And even if they made mistakes before, that doesn't mean they would make the same mistakes again. People can change. So don't treat people like they can't.

Cussing

Anon1: I really appreciate everyone here and I know there are those who want to help and others who are seeking advice. This is a great platform! But it disturbs me when I read and there is foul language. Seriously I believe everyone here is intelligent enough to be able to express themselves and ask questions without resorting to the “F” word or other vulgar words. Why use offensive words when your intelligence is greater? I’m just throwing that out there because it just makes me feel annoyed and sad. I believe Parents who are concerned enough with their children’s well being that they come on a forum like this can do better than that. Just expressing myself here.

Anon2: I think there is a generational gap for cussing. People under 30 do not see cussing as something that bad it’s just expressive language to most of us. and with the age of tv and the internet cussing is so mainstream that there is really no thought or intent involved most of the time. While a lot of people over 40 see it as super harsh

Rami: i'm 42. no problem with cussing. i cuss more than anyone. even in front of my kids. and interestingly enough, my kids don't cuss around adults who don't like cussing (like school, banks, court rooms).

Anon1: Why not cuss in school, courts, banks etc. If there is no problem with it and it doesn't effect the atmosphere of the conversation... why not?

Rami: cuz those people are like you and i'd rather not offend you if i don't have to. i respect people's preferences in general - as long as it doesn't violate my preferences. and i follow tradition in general, as long as it doesn't violate my principles/values.

On morality: Is it from religion, science, or both? Ramzy Maclon & Rami Rustom Session #1

I had a great discussion with Ramzy Maclon in my group Enlightening The Arab World about whether science or religion is the source of morality.

Below is the discussion with some editing for clarity and brevity.

The discussion started when he posted to my group with the following (with facebook's translation):

سأل مسلم ملحد: كيف تعرف الصواب من الخطأ الأخلاقي من دون دين؟

- الملحد: عن طريق عقلي؟

- مسلم: وكيف يعرف عقلك الصواب من الخطأ الأخلاقي؟

- الملحد: أسأل اليابانيين؟

- المسلم: وكيف يعرف اليابانيون الصواب من الخطأ الأخلاقي؟

- الملحد: عن طريق العقل

- المسلم: وكيف يعرف العقل الصواب من الخطأ الأخلاقي؟

- الملحد: أسأل اليابانيون

المسلم:

A Muslim asked an atheist: How do you know right from moral error without religion?

- Atheist: through my mind?

- Muslim: How does your mind know right from moral error?

- Atheist: Ask the Japanese?

- Muslim: And how do Japanese know right from moral error?

- Atheist: through reason

- Muslim: How does the right mind know from moral error?

- Atheist: Ask the Japanese

The Muslim:

شوكت كريمي

There's a real way to know right from wrong away from your conversation with the strawman


Rami Rustom

How would you reply to the OP?


شوكت كريمي

It's a straw man . No atheist will talk like this and there is actually away to know what is right and what is wrong

Whether the act is beneficial or harmful to the individual and group .
That will decide on the morality of the action


Rami Rustom

yes I basically agree with you.

I think what also matters is the extent to which someone had the requisite knowledge to do the “moral” action.

Ramzy Maclon

Beneficiary and harmfulness are relative religious terms. They can't be explained on the base of logical reasoning, or on the base of science with it's deterministic or quantum natural laws, or on the base of evolution theory with it futility random purposeless genetic mutations, or on the base of secularity view of the universe as meaninglessness materialistic phenomena.

Rami Rustom

Why do you believe that beneficiary/harmfulness is subjective/relative ?

You didn’t explain.


Ramzy Maclon

What is that makes some things right and others wrong?


Rami Rustom

We use the scientific approach.


Ramzy Maclon

So please tell me how could you prove rape wrong by using the "scientific approach "


Rami Rustom

Science doesn’t work by “prov[ing]” things.

I know people say that about science but people are confused.

Science works like this. We start with some theories. It doesn’t matter how bad they are. It’s theories that we are using in real life.

Then we find mistakes in the theories and sometimes we find fixes to those mistakes. That takes the form of new theories.

And we keep doing that forever.

So we’re always going from flawed theories to less flawed theories to even less flawed theories.

Does that make sense ?


Ramzy Maclon

No, it makes nonsense. Science -like evolution theory- doesn't tell us what must we do or what we must not. Science just explains and describes how things happen.

Rami Rustom

Do you want to learn about my view ?

If so, I can explain to you in detail how we create moral knowledge using the scientific approach.

Are you interested?

Ramzy Maclon

Yes, I would appreciate that

[to be continued...]

Happy with some parts of your life but not others?

It’s common for people to be happy with some parts of their lives but not others. Imagine a scientist who is happy with his science work but unhappy with some interpersonal problems he has in his family. Why does this happen? Why is he succeeding in one part of his life while failing in another? And what should he do about it?

Below I provide answers that are not standard knowledge in our culture. And below that I explain some standard knowledge in our culture and some flaws with it.

For most people, their mind is very compartmentalized. It takes work to integrate one’s mind and they haven’t done much of that work.

Imagine the scientist does very good work in his profession. He approaches problems in his profession in a calm and rational way. He studies the work of the experts in his field resulting in learning the best practices in the field. He implements those best practices in his professional life, resulting in doing pretty well at discovering the truth of whatever science problems he’s working on.

Consider that that scientist, like everyone else, built up parts of his mind much earlier in his life. He created policies (habits) during childhood that he still uses today, which are not compatible with the newer policies that he applies in his professional life. For example, sometimes he gets angry upon learning about an interpersonal problem that happened at home, but he never gets angry about problems in his science work.

If the scientist figured out how to apply his rational thinking methods that he learned in his profession to all parts of his life, he’d do much better. He’d be integrating his mind so that he applies his best thinking methods in all parts of his life, instead of using his best thinking methods for only some parts of his life and his bad thinking methods in the rest of his life. If he integrated his mind enough, he’d no longer be using his bad thinking methods.

So how does one integrate his mind so that he uses his best thinking methods in all parts of his life instead of just in some parts?

One thing you can do is this. Make a concerted effort to: (1) Identify your best thinking methods and why they are useful. (2) Identify which parts of your life that you don’t use those best thinking methods in. (3) Identify why your bad thinking methods don’t work well as compared to your good thinking methods. (4) Keep a written log of these things and review them often. Note that writing down one’s thoughts is a tool that is included as part of expert scientists’ best thinking methods. Einstein said, “My pencil and I are more clever than I.”

Another thing you could do to integrate your mind is to study the field directly by learning the best ideas that experts in the field already figured out — similar to how you (the scientist) do that in your field. The field goes by the name “philosophy”. Note that most stuff labeled as philosophy is not good. Note also that it’s much harder to figure out what’s good in the field of philosophy than compared to the field of science. In science, it’s relatively easy to objectively know when you’re wrong because you can check your theories against empirical evidence. But with philosophy, you can’t check your theories against empirical evidence. This is because it’s not possible for a philosophical theory to be contradicted by empirical evidence. Only scientific theories can be contradicted by empirical evidence. In philosophy, the only way to contradict a theory is by philosophical criticism.

In our current culture, a standard way of dealing with personal and interpersonal problems that one wants help with is to seek help from a psychologist. While that could be helpful, psychologists are not very good at what they do. The standard psychologist does not learn from philosophers, despite the fact that the work they do is philosophy work — psychology is a subfield of philosophy. Psychologists primarily only learn from other psychologists. This prevents them from learning from philosophy experts who are not labeled as “psychologists”.

Most scientists do a similar thing. They try to learn from other scientists but they don’t try to learn from philosophers, despite the fact that science is a subfield of philosophy. There is good work in the field of philosophy that applies to scientific thinking. If a scientist learned that stuff, he’d be a more effective scientist.

7 LEVELS OF HONESTY/DISHONESTY

Creating and spreading lies contributes to destroying peoples' minds. Some of the people involved in spreading lies are more responsible than others. And some people are helping reveal the lies. I describe 7 levels of people involved in spreading lies and revealing lies.

Level 1

• leader who created the lies

• tries to get more people to spread the lies with him

Level 2

• follower who knows they are lies

• likes the idea of spreading the lies

• tries to get more people to spread the lies with him

Level 3

• follower who doesn’t know they are lies

• tries to get more people to spread the lies with him

Level 4

• follower who knows they are lies

• doesn’t like the idea of spreading the lies

• but spreads the lies anyway for fear of physical retaliation or social punishment

• inadvertently gets more people to spread the lies with him

Level 5

• ex-follower or never-follower

• but stays quiet about the lies for fear of social punishment

Level 6

• ex-follower or never-follower

• detractor spreading criticism about the lies

Level 7

• ex-follower or never-follower

• detractor trying to convert followers to ex-followers

• uniter of all the levels of people

Examples:

Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, was level 1 regarding Islam. His inner circle were level 2. I was a level 3. My parents were level 3. My granddad was level 4. There were many level 4s in history — imagine all the scientists and great thinkers of the Middle East who wanted to keep their heads.

People who were level 5 for Islamic lies are those who are afraid to lose their jobs, or cause fights with their spouses, or get cancelled by the leftist social media.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is level 6 regarding Islam. Maybe she wants to be level 7. Maybe she is a 7. I'm not sure what being a 7 would look like. For one thing, she's not involved in any online public discussion group where she and others are learning from each other. She does write books and articles (and now she has a podcast) and does interviews but that alone is not effective compared to also participating in critical discussion with others.

I think that approximately everybody believes, follows, and inadvertently spreads some lies. So even if they are level 6 (and trying to be level 7) for Islamic lies, they are level 3 for some other lies.

Many western parents are level 2 for the Santa Clause lie.