Courage, Compassion, Thinking Fast And Slow, And A Call For Empathy

This is an important post. Information density is medium, length is significant but not nearly as much as my other posts that are just as important, so relatively short, and the ideas are important ones, which makes this post one of the un-skippables, things I indicate at the beginning of every post. Ideas including the edits, as always. One post that's kind of an extension of ideas discussed here is the 'Schopenhauer' series. Similar posts include 'Courage', 'Confessions' and 'Objective is Subjective'.

Note: All the ideas presented in this post are not ideas I strongly believe in or endorse, because I am currently not knowledgeable enough to say anything with confidence, nor have I consulted anyone who is an expert on these topics, so please do not adopt any of these ideas as your own, because they are almost certainly incorrect. Read them just as a starting point for further enquiry, perhaps as an introduction that could make you more curious or interested in it, and always keep in mind the principles of Rationality, Scientific Skepticism, Critical Thinking and Open-Mindedness. Or just read it for fun, because I'm just playing with ideas here, everyone is most welcome to correct me wherever they think I'm wrong, and I'd be more than happy to change my mind in light of convincing logical reasons or empirical evidence.

The other day I came across this quote attributed to Nelson Mandela- “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." and I realized it's very similar to a very interesting and insightful lesson I learned by reading Daniel Kahneman's classic 'Thinking Fast and Slow', which is a book I strongly recommend to anyone who wants to make better decisions in life and learn more about the workings of our human mind.

The distinction between system 1 and system 2 thinking is something I notice everyday everywhere I observe humans in every area of life. In brief, system 1 is the intuitive, subconscious, quick, snap-judgment making part of the brain that takes no effort and that gives you the first impression or intuition or idea you get after reading any question or observing any event before you start to deliberately think about it.

The system 2 is the deliberate, slower, more conscious and rational part of the brain- the conscious you who thinks a question with their logic and reason to arrive at a more thoughtful answer. That is my understanding of it, and it's also important to understand that the system 1 is helpful in many situations where we don't need much cognitive energy to figure out things- everyday habits, things we're expert at, using simple language in casual everyday conversations etc.

Now I'm going to connect this with Mandela's quote, and explain how it's also a very important and useful way of thinking- it ties in with my belief in determinism, which of course isn't absolute or dogmatic, but I have a certain degree of confidence in it that would require a lot of sound logical arguments and reliable empirical evidence to change my mind.

System 1 is something that depends on the make up of your brain, which depends on your genes, which depends on your parents, early environment and random chance; all external factors that are not under your direct control. And that means your first intuitions, if you haven't learned to scrutinize them with logic and reason, would dictate all your preferences, desires, interests and essentially your whole personality.

Similarly, people who may have racist impulses or a desire to kill may not learn to use their logic and reason to scrutinize their intuitions and act on them without thinking. Here's my main idea- people should not be blamed or ostracized for having racist thoughts or having desires to murder or do anything that is considered a crime.

Why do I Say this? Because if you understood the concept of determinism and system-1 I tried to describe above, you'd realize the desires to be make racist comments or kill innocent people are desires that the individual had no control over- it was just how they happened to be born with the genes that made them like that.

So should everyone be okay with racism and killing people? Of course, I'm all for the Purge and Eugenics, let's wipe out the inferior races and have some real-life Hunger games, see if Hobbes was right about human nature- empirically test his theories, for science!

Just kidding, of course. Do you think I'm stupid enough to say that on a public blog post even if I believed in those ideas? regardless of the fact that probably not many people are going to read this post, let me assure you that no, I'm not that stupid.

And no, I also don't hold any such beliefs, as empathy and compassion are some of my core values, I believe in trying to avoid superficial stuff like appearance and race, and focus more on the person inside the machine, the mind inside the body, because that's who the person is, and even though it's unclear what the 'self' is, that's the closest answer we have for now.

Also if I had such beliefs, I wouldn't be writing this blog post and trying to make people understand why it's important to cultivate compassion and empathy, even for people who are influenced by external factors to do things they later regret. That's also related to my belief in prevention and rehabilitation rather than punishment.

This is important because we are usually good at attributing our own mistakes to external factors and quick to judge people and blame them for their mistakes by suggesting that their mistakes were a result of some stupid decision they made of some inherent unchangeable flaw in their personality traits.

Basically we're better at detecting other's mistakes than our own, and it's a cognitive bias so it's not our fault, but we need to be mindful of it and keep this in mind next time we think we may fall for it and plan accordingly.

So just like, as Mandela said, Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it, I think that thinking clearly and having no racist or irrational impulsive thoughts is not what we should aspire for because it's unrealistic, at least for now; it's perfectly fine if you have such socially unacceptable thoughts.

Here's another similar quote: "Winners are not those who never lose, but those who never quit." You'd notice that the one thing common in the two quotes and my main idea is that we should try to focus on what we can control, and not obsess about the outcome, which is generally determined by an interaction of several external factors out of our control.

This way you don't give external factors out of your control the power to influence your own mental state, and your mental state is only dependent on you, so this way you have the mental strength to only let your own actions influence you and not others. This is also one of the main ideas of Stoic philosophy. I realized that it's more complicate than that, because we often unquestioningly accept what is under our control and what isn't without trying our best, but that's a topic for another time.

What makes you a good or evil person depends on whether or not you use your rational conscious deliberate logical system-2 brain to override those impulsive and intuitive thoughts, and do something not to suppress them, because suppressing desires is unhealthy, but maybe seek help or share them with people who could help you out, and not acting upon them.

To any person who is suffering from this, this might sound like a very difficult task, because no one else may have similar desires, they are able to live normally and peacefully without trying to go against their true impulsive and intuitive desires, without fighting their system-1 brain, and if they share, other people might not understand and ostracize such a person without trying to understand that it's not their fault that they are like this, and by telling them they just did something very courageous and they are not being helpful at all, and whatever may happen next would be their responsibility as much as that persons, in case they desire to act on their desires.

Usually people are not able to do this, and this is why we have all the serial killers, racists and other irrational people who give in to their mysterious desires because they just can't bear not acting on them and their brain won't leave them alone till they do, and they go on to do stuff that affects other people's lives by causing significant harm and loss of life, and the society that should have supported them and be more understanding in the first place is now even more unlikely to have empathy towards such people and try to understand their motivations, because now most members of the society themselves are acting on their own irrational and illogical, but perfectly understandable, desire to get closure and mental peace by seeing such people getting punished

After all, they probably lost someone close to them, but they fail to see how that person was also someone innocent who was plagued by strong desires that were a result of no doing of their own, and it was exactly for the reason that many people failed to understand them or listen to them by showing some empathy, kindness and compassion- let alone detecting such people early and trying to prevent such incident in the first place- that all this happened.

And that this is probably going to be the case in the near future too and won't stop anytime soon unless we put an end to the vicious cycle that's been set into motion by the public hatred towards such "evil" people, only if we could look at the human inside the machine, try to look at the world from their perspective and stand in their shoes for a moment, only then would we realize that the fact is probably that it's no person is evil, only their actions are, and that could be changed.

That's why the world needs more empathetic and compassionate listeners who can try to understand without judgement, and you absolutely don't need to be a psychotherapist to do that or even have basic knowledge of human psychology; you just need to learn how to be a good human who is capable of understanding another human and at least trying to understand what they are going through, without even needing to give any advice.

Just with some compassion and empathy, I believe that the society could be a much more wonderful place. And take this however you want, but I have plans to go deeper into investigating consciousness and the system-1 brain the future, and developing some sort of interventions that could help modify or at least align out intuitions more with reality and so we could live in peace and harmony.

I believe that no amount of resources and time expended is too much or interventions too unconventional or unethical when the stakes are too high, best case scenario this alluring, and goal something like helping people live better lives by reducing their suffering and building a better society, because we never really understand how much the other person might be suffering until it happens to us.

Of course we can never be certain of the exact nature of the person's subjective experience, at least not yet, but even just trying to understand their perspective and worldview is more than enough to create a much better and peaceful society, in my opinion.

Update: I just realized the hard way how it's unwise to express your opinion openly and logically to people who might not value logic and rationality as much as you do, and get emotionally motivate without trying to understand or explain. More in my post on heated arguments and civilized debates.

I want to make myself clear through an example. I recently talked to a person who confessed to me that he is a homophobe, and a certain other fetish that people would look down upon. Now what I'm going to tell you- what I did, and why I did it- what I'm going to explain, explain is really important- very important- please try to understand what I am going to say now, I think this is really needed to create a better society and help people.

Try to be logical and rational, set aside your preconceived notions and prejudices and all cognitive biases, try to think scientifically and objectively as much as you can and listen to me with an open mind. And keep in mind this is just my opinion and I would be more than happy to listen to your different perspective and change my mind if I'm convinced by the counterevidence and logic you are able to present.

So, a person just confided in me with one of his unconventional beliefs that others would probably literally assassinate him for. If you think that I just abused him and blocked him, and if you think you would, I would greatly appreciate it and plead you to try to understand what I actually did, and why I did not do what, say, queer people would feel like doing.

This person happened to share a lot of my beliefs, which is probably why they felt comfortable sharing such a thing with me. To be perfectly honest, I was sort of enraged for a moment. I even asked him a question in a manner I could have been more tactful about, something about why he had to hold such a belief that I feel so wrong about, myself having quite a few queer friends belonging and identifying with the LGBTQIA+ community, and knowing about the problems they have faced and everyday face in society, I did feel like having this person taste some of it through some words I know I could use to make them feel really uncomfortable- as some people would believe that they deserve to- I could do that, and I got dangerously close to actually doing that, because it was night time and my cognitive resources drained and so I was more prone to irrational behaviour I might have regretted.

Now if you have read my posts, you would know I'm not the sort of person to do such a thing, but then to be perfectly honest I had also never gotten an opportunity to confront and talk to a person who says he's a homophobe, something I strongly dislike, so I tried using rationality again, and for those of you who might feel like screaming at me that rationality won't work here and I need to feel the victim's suffering and know what happens with queer people, please bear with me for a minute here, I promise it has a happy ending and a very insightful and valuable lesson that you could- if not adopt- consider and understand to just know that it is possible, and that in most cases this technique it works.

As soon as I realized I asked that sharp question and made a remark that might make them feel they made a mistake by sharing, my logical brain kicked in and came to my rescue. I instantly deleted the message, and even though I kept the ones where I tell him that I'm unable to believe how he is being illogical after sharing quite a few of my beliefs and preferences, I quickly sent a message saying that I really appreciate and admire his courage, honesty, directness and openness with sharing this opinion, and not pretending to have a belief they don't have, because they could just have stayed silent and minded their own business, but they confided in me, and it's my duty to understand them and try to change their mind without making them regret that they happened to express their opinion, because they placed their trust in me, and regardless of their opinion, I did not want to be impolite or irrational and be sorry when they did nothing wrong.

So what did I do? I did something that I did in a similar situation before, a long time ago, when I learnt this lesson and how to handle such situations, and I did the same thing here. I am going to describe and explain it in the general form, then get specific and explain exactly how I applied it to this situation and while dealing with this person who believes that they are homophobic, which is also a really nice illustration of the main idea I have been trying to convey through this post and that you might be able to understand through this real life example.

Instead of acting on my first impulse of just blocking them or unfriending them and never talking to them again, or as some people prefer, using rude language to make them feel uncomfortable and never talking to them again, I do this: First I try to understand if they mean what I think they mean, because you know, language is so ambiguous, you can never be sure you two are on the same page unless you explicitly make it clear and ask them to define what they mean, and why they think what they think. This is essential; trying to understand what they mean.

Do they really mean what we think homophobic means, or something else? And if they do, what are their reasons, why do they think so? What logical reasons do they have to back it up? Ask specific questions and use hypotheticals if required: would they commit acts of violence for their cause and do they believe in harming the groups of people they dislike? Or is it just an impulsive thought that they have no control over, and that they override with their logical brain, or not, trying to rationalize it. Try to listen and understand. Then if you feel they are someone you don't want to talk to any more, do what you got to do, but not before that.

Now coming back to the situation and how I applied this rule while talking to the person. After telling them that they can be open with me and feel comfortable sharing their thoughts without being afraid of judgment by me and because it's not easy to offend me; I would not be offended even if they said they wish to murder me- which was an extreme and overly dramatic example or fringe case I used to make myself clear and make them comfortable with answering the questions I was going to ask.

Then I asked them the following questions: Why do you think you are homophobic, and what reasons to you have to be believe in homophobia? Coming to the specific questions: Do you believe that they should be punished? That society should not accept them and they should be made to conform to the norm by whatever means possible? That they should not be allowed to love each other, engage in public display of affection, or copulate? Do you believe in committing acts of violence against homosexual people, or harming them in any way, physically or mentally?

Keep in mind that I have several queer friends, am a supported of the movement and strongly dislike homophobic attitude and beliefs, so it took effort to come up with and frame the questions in such a way, but I'm glad I did, for the reasons I'm going to explain now. Firstly, I discovered that what they were calling 'homophobic' was not what I considered 'homophobic' at all! I had assumed on the basis of some pre-conceive notions of what the word means- at least for a few microseconds, before my logical brain kicked in- without considering the fact that I could never know what exactly the person means with this word and that they might have a very different meaning from my own, and I'd never know what it is till I ask them to clarify and explicitly question them to understand their point of view; see if their worldview is what I have started to think it is.

Turns out it was not. And this is something that would happen in most cases, if people stop and think for a second, not getting enraged or emotionally motivated and starting to call them names acting irrationally, then they would realize how they actually think very similar and if they try to understand the person they would, and they would realize how similar their own opinion is, and, if nothing else, at least agree to disagree.

Thought usually form my experience at least I discover that they mean something different and it's a communication problem- or problems inherent to the ambiguity and limits of natural language- and even if they do believe that, in the worst case scenario, at least I won't regret acting irrationally and keep wondering forever what they actually meant, which I would be curious about forever if I don't even try to understand their perspective. This ambiguity of language, even though beautiful when used in appropriate context like poetry or creative writing, create a lot of problems such as mentioned here.

I have already created a blog post about non verbal communication tactics and other distractions, explaining how using more objective and scientific language could help us not only be more logical and free of bias but also enjoy life more, and I shall create similar blog posts in the future related to some ideas from Wittgenstein and Derrida in simple language- yet not oversimplified as you might know if you have read my other posts, get a bit dense at times, so I've been told- as well as the concepts applied to my personal past experiences in real life and analogies and metaphors with other disciplines.

The person believe that they are homophobic just because they had these irrational thoughts about feeling strange and uncomfortable in front of homosexual people in real life. They answered in the negative to all my specific questions: they meant no harm, believed they should be accepted in society, do whatever they feel like doing, live and let live, and definitely not committing any acts of violence against them. That's what they told me.

The only reason they believed that they are homophobic was they they had this feeling of discomfort while interacting with such people, and that's it, because they never acted on them, were able to override their instinctive human brain with their logic and reason, and understand that it would be highly irrational and wrong to do any such thing.

We are accepting and accommodating of people who have unconventional and unpopular philias and fetishes, and even encourage them to be open about it and seek a community of like-minded people, because they just happen to have the genes and early environment that predisposes or inclines them in a way that they have it, and they're not harming anyone so why not let them do whatever they want?

Same goes for the queer community. They never harm anyone and just wish to live in peace and be more accommodated, accepted by and comfortable in society, and they too have the sort of genes and early environment that made them this way, their brains feel attracted to such people, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, as I believe everyone reading this would agree. If someone doesn't, I'd like them to contact me and share their reasons; it'd be an interesting debate and we could learn something about each other, and more importantly, about ourselves.

Just like the people with philias and queer community, phobias manifest in the exact same way. These people have the genes and grew up in the sort of environment that just made them this way, they never got to choose their preferences, philias, or phobias, or who they feel attracted to or aversive to, what they find pleasurable and what they find repulsive.

What does matter, and what they probably can control, and also what ultimately decides whether they are being ethical or not and whether the society perceives them as good or evil and whether or not they could harm someone in any way, is this: do they have the ability to be aware of, and override, the unethical impulsive thoughts with their logical system-2 mind? Would they have enough self-control and self-restraint to not act upon them and any irrational desires the might arise and compel them to act irrationally and do something they'd regret or that would harm another person? Do they realize, detect and acknowledge when such impulsive desires might be irrational so they have any mechanisms in place to prevent them from acting irrationally, or in the worst case seek some sort of help or therapy?

That's it. If the answer to all these questions happens to be in the affirmative, then they're safe for the society and there's nothing that society should condemn them or ostracize them for, and they are doing their best and would probably never pose a threat to anyone. We just need to not be quick at assuming and arriving at judgments without making clear that you really understand what their worldview is, and then taking any actions.

I believe that we could create a better society this way, and of course once again I would try my best to understand anyone who thinks differently. Amusingly, I also came across another person in this time, someone who never told me he is a psychopath or sociopath, but that I immediately recognized just from a few messages, having read quite a few books about this interesting group of individuals who seem to completely lack the internal moral compass or conscience that the majority of people have, which makes the normal people feel good being ethical and bad being unethical, putting it briefly in simple terms.

Trigger warning: graphic language, though I think that I'm already too late and anyone who has read everything till this point would probably also be able to read what's going to come. But just in case, I'm going to talk about some things that the person told me that involve actual suffering or sentient beings even though it's mentioned very briefly, so if you find gore disturbing so much that you believe that you won't be handle the description, please stop right here, skim or directly skip to the end.

The person- different from the 'homophobe'- told me that he derived pleasure from torturing animals when he was young, and on asking some questions and learning about the activities I got to learn that he is almost certainly a psychopath, and that he displays the MacDonald triad, childhood activities indicative of aggressive and violent behavior in adults. I immediately understood that it would be futile trying to explain ethics and morality to him, and that it's an opportunity to just understand their worldview better.

Here comes the graphic part I had been alluding to. But first I'd like to preface it with recounting very briefly an incident from my childhood when I mistakenly stepped on an ant, despite always trying my best to avoid stepping on them while walking. I consider myself a stoic person and don't get too emotional very easily, but tears started clouding my vision and I was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and shame, because it was uncertain whether it was unconscious, and the poor ant could have been deprived of a lot of pleasurable experiences- if it's capable of experiencing such emotions- I experienced intense guilt and negative emotions when I realized that I killed an ANT, a helpless and possibly sentient being that might have experienced large amounts of unbearable suffering in thee last moments of their life but didn't have any medium to express their anguish and mental agony and convey their predicament, and the loss of all net positive experiences and pleasure they could have had, while it was uncertain if the net positive would outweigh the potential net negative, because if the latter were true then I did them a favour, but regardless I know that I didn't know and now I can never know and my brain is just coming up with clever rationalizations to justify my heinous act (after all I wouldn't let it go so easily had I killed a human or stepped on a human-like tiny being), and so it was very foolish to step on the ant without knowing for some certainty if that were the case, but again it was by mistake, a costly one for the ant, and for me too had I been an unthinking automaton like the majority of my fellow humans with an overly anthropocentric view of the universe and no regard for the mental states of other possible sentient life forms coexisting with us; same for plants by the way.

Now I know that the ant could be sentient, though I can't say for sure, but more importantly, I know that it is futile to obsess over something that I can not control now, an ant that is already dead, who probably can't be brought back to life, and even if it can, it might take resources and time not worth the effort, so the opportunity costs would be too high and the project unrealistic or infeasible, hence the rational thing to do is just learn from the experience and extract as many lessons as I can, and move on while keeping those lessons in mind so I never repeat such a mistake in the future, or connect those experiences with information I might acquire going forward that would help me generate some useful insights or discover more about myself and my true values.

That's just one incident that left a lasting impression in my mind such that I still remember it, not as vividly but still much better than anything else that might have took place around that time, things I have mostly forgotten now. There have been several instances in my early childhood when I used to tell my peers that it's wrong to bother ants by trying to corner then or close off their movement on ground using their hands as sort of walls or borders, let alone squashing them for fun. And I actually cried when I first saw a video of chick culling, which I'd encourage you to not look up, or actually I should, because it's an issue that people need to be more aware about and a startling illustration of the cruelty some humans are capable of.

Before you form a mental image of my personality inconsistent with reality, or at least reality as I perceive it, I like reading and learning about true crime, serial killers and psychopaths, yet I can't help trying to walk without taking care that I don't step on ants, but it's also true that I've enjoyed competing and doing very well in taekwondo and karate competitions in the past, which admittedly were more about discipline and technique than raw strength or aggression.

Coming back to the psychopath: with this background, I'll tell you what he said, so you can understand from the background information I have given you about me how I would have felt when they told me that.. they greatly enjoyed torturing rodents, throwing turtles in ant colonies, and hitting cats on the head repeatedly with hammers. I don't think I need to explain what I felt at the moment; I'll leave it to your own imagination. How I reacted, however, was completely different, and consistent with the general plan or algorithm I described earlier.

I tried to- using words tactfully and carefully for the maximum effect keeping in mind the sort of person I'm talking to, which wasn't too hard because he seemed more or less open to discussion and debate using logic- explain that the brings might have suffered greatly from his actions, and he wouldn't have liked it if someone threw him in a colony of wasps or hit them with a heavy object on the head repeatedly. And that they had no good reason except their own selfish desires, so are they okay with knowing that they might have suffered?

The answer I received was as exactly the answer you would have expected from a psychopathic person. He also told me that even though he doesn't do it now, that's because of constraints that do not include any sort of moral compunction or remorse, and that they would like to do it again if and when they get the opportunity to do so, and they don't regret their past actions in the slightest, even knowing that the beings could have suffered.

So there's another example to show that something your worst fears are confirmed. I did clarify stuff and ask specific questions to make sure that it really is how I'm thinking it is, and it was, so now I can act accordingly, but my plan and framework still worked, though as this example illustrates it might not give you the favourable outcome you desire every time, because you don't always get what you want, but you can still try to be more rational and less wrong, and try to make better decisions and avoid actions you might regret later on.

Before ending, I'd like to touch upon something I mention in my post titled heated discussions and civilized debate, and elaborate a little on the incident that motivated me to create that post. I'd encourage you to check out that post if you haven't read it. It's about how I learned that it's unwise to express your opinions and true beliefs when it might be inappropriate or not a good idea to do so, due to the person you're talking to or a number of several other factors that depend on the specific situation and that I could try to generalize into principles but I'm too exhausted to do right now.

The person who told me he thinks he's homophobic should probably not express this opinion in an online public forum, because 1) as I explained to him- he does not fit the criteria for being homophobic and he believes that society should accept them and they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and 2) even if he does that, people might get the wrong impression and the wrong ideas and most people are probably not going to be as open minded and logical, trying to understand what you even mean, before getting triggered due to reasonable experiences they might have or be aware of, and it's very possible that they might even get assassinated, as I told them half-jokingly.

I myself got to learn this the hard way, as I describe in the post about heated arguments and civilized debate. My point was that people who commit crimes should be rehabilitated and prevented rather than just making them suffer which would not change their mind and after their punishment they'd just go out and do it again and the punishment does never set and example, in brief that was what I was saying, and so as punishment doesn't work we should focus on catching them early and rehabilitating them in a way that they never do it again, or are never able to do it again, by whatever means, but punishment doesn't work, is what I said.

Now I didn't know that the person I was talking to had suffered from experiences that made them uncomfortable, and they started using words and saying things that hurt me, yet after I learned what happened, I tried my best, and tried to explain that you have every right to be angry, I am very sorry, I admire your courage in trying to explain to me, thank you for trying to make me understand, I know it's tough but I really want to understand which is why I'm asking you, and it's not your fault and I'm not offended, but they never made me understand and were like you don't know you would never know and calling me names; it was tough, but I kept at it because I genuinely wanted to understand.

Now I realize how silly and naïve I was for them to share my core values and not get angry, and as I suspected, and later my suspicions were confirmed when another person gave me the advice that I must be careful talking to people who might have been through certain experiences that are too painful to recount, and they might not be open to talking about it or answering any of my questions, let alone helping me understand, and I myself should not put myself in such a situation because it might be too mentally taxing and emotionally draining, with little scope of productive discussion or debate, as I already had learned the hard way.

This made me wonder then how I could empathize with such people, and I came up with some solutions, but I won't get into them as they're not as relevant to the present discussion. I wish that they would have used the same technique I did with the 'homophobe' and the psychopath, but I also know that I have not been through any such suffering- I actually have been through quite a bit in the past, but not in the way that they probably did, and I can never understand how much more the other person might have suffered- and so they were completely justified in their outrage and emotional outburst, but I also gleaned some valuable insights and learned some important lessons, so I think overall it was worth it, and still admire the courage they showed in trying to explain their perspective after the situation cooled down a bit, though I'm still not at talking terms with them, or rather they are too upset with me, because as you might have been able to figure, I have no hard feelings and I never blamed them for hurting me in ways I would never have accepted had I not been the one to start it and say things that might have triggered them and made them feel uncomfortable, because I could have kept silent but it was my desire to understand that resulted in such a situation, and I'm glad I learned everything I learned, yet upset- not with them, but myself- for upsetting them so much that they refuse to talk to me now. And I'm also fortunately able to be rational enough to propose that I could just stop being their friend if they wish, because friends have their friend's best interests in mind, and it'd be illogical to stay in the social contract if it makes even one of the people involved uncomfortable. I might create a blog post about what the word 'friend' could possibly mean, and what I think it means for me. Please let me know if you have any comments.

Update 2: It's so hilarious, and I could just not not share this. Just one day after I update this post, I am presented with this situation as if to be tested on what I have learnt, one of the lessons I have written about in this post. Someone told me to open a Twitter account, I do and start it, and the first post that I see, the very first post the very first time on creating an account and even opening Twitter in years, is a video about some celebrity speaking the most homophobic stuff about how pronouns are made-up nonsense on a channel with a homophobic title and full of homophobic comments.

As you could imagine, I couldn't help myself and got into the debate and could not survive their attacks but did manage to take down a few suckers down with me in the violent fight that ensued.

Just kidding, you know I'm not that sort of person, that's such an irrational thing to do. Do you think I'm stupid? Well, yes, you're right, but I'm not that stupid, okay. I have learned and successfully applied once my lesson of knowing when is the correct time and who is the correct person and what is the appropriate situation to engage with people and talk to them about beliefs and issues related to what could be their core values that they very closely associate with their 'self' and so would never tolerate being attacked, unless they happen to be open-minded and , rational, or believe in the scientific method.

I know that those people, even if they need to be presented with logical arguments about anything at all, not just homosexuality and queer community, now would be the wrong time and might backfire on myself, so it's unwise and irrational to do so, and even trying to would be stupid because the probability of achieving my goal is too low if I use this method- the goal being successfully changing their minds..

no, rather more like being able to understand their perspective or worldview and making them understand mine and at least agreeing to disagree; present them with counterarguments and see what answers they have for them, because we would never know what the other person thinks and where he went wrong in their beliefs or misguided mistaken thoughts, or where we went wrong, and then being more informed and make better decisions.

And this idea does not just apply to unethical activities. You can also say that ambitious people are no different from lazy unmotivated people in the sense that no one is objectively better than the other, both are following their inclinations and what they feel good doing, or feel unhappy not doing. Same way that the mathematical genius who derives the same amount of pleasure from solving equations as the gaming addict who derives from playing video games.

Both are following their selfish desires, their incentives, their inclinations as determined by their genes and environment, things they never got to choose. Just happens that they happen to be born in a society at a time and place where it's socially acceptable and the norm to praise a very specific type of mathematical intelligence and push people to be ambitious, which is amazing if you happen to be inclined in that way, and.. not-amazing, to put it very mildly, if you are not.

Which is why it is important to keep in mind that nothing is absolute and social constructs are.. social constructs, not something absolute and objective set by the universe. If you happen to have certain values and society tries to make you conform to the prevalent morals, because the majority happens to be inclined in that way and so find life easy and never even think about it too deeply, then you would do better by doing your own think regardless of what people might think, especially if you're not harming anyone in the process, something I discuss in my blog post This Spoke Zarathustra.

I'm not even asking you to consider going to those extreme limits where you completely give up praise and blame or good and evil, no, not yet, this would be too large a jump for someone to make who doesn't already think so, and in my opinion, in order to create a better society, it's nowhere as important as realizing and acknowledging that you have no good reason to consciously discriminate against people who have preferences that have nothing to do with you- be it expressing hatred for someone based on their background, sexual preferences, orientation, preferences; mocking someone for their body when in fact it could be the case that it's not simply being unhealthy but some genetic condition that also results in great distress for them, or someone with antisocial personality disorder or sociopathy disorder, or those on the spectrum, or those who happen to fall into one of thousands of groups that you don't happen to be a part of- your in-groups- and so you don't even try to empathize and take into account their feelings before arriving at a judgment without trying to understand them and their problems.

Edit: It makes more sense now that I have been diagnosed with high-functioning Autism or Asperger's syndrome. It's called cognitive empathy, and I have it in higher amounts than affective empathy, which is why most people feel but don't understand, and act on their impulsive desires without scrutinizing their intuitive thoughts with logic, also something that Aspies are usually better at.

This is just another good reason for me to try to explain why cognitive empathy is important, and how everyone who is not biologically naturally predisposed or inclined towards it could learn the thinking skills and processes which I have fortunately somewhat been able to capture by observing my thought processes and analyzing by own behaviour, and tried to express in simple and clear words and algorithmic practical steps that anyone could use to get better at it and be more kind and compassionate towards those who currently suffer due to this very inability of people to do so.

I believe that after a certain minimum level of affective empathy, it's important to use your logic and reason to be more rational while solving such problems, even if they involve doing good or produce any sort of emotional affect in your brain.

And of course myself cultivating more of affective empathy, so I can relate with neurotypicals in a better way, and because I realize the importance of having a certain level of affective empathy to motivate you to use your cognitive ability to solve a problem that you feel motivated about, though it's more complicated than that, because just feelings strongly about something doesn't mean that it's the most pressing issue or that you're going to solve it effectively, just that you happen to be predisposed to experience a high amount of emotional affect when you think about it, which is not the best way to do good, which is also what I think is one of the main ideas of Effective Altruism, and something I might talk about in other posts.

In any case, I'm going to be more proactive in trying to explain my perspective to the world, especially neurotypicals who don't have cognitive empathy, and create more posts on this topic in the near future.

edit 2: a recent essay very relevant to this post: https://psyche.co/ideas/why-psychological-research-on-child-sex-offenders-is-important

I have mentioned several times in my other posts how it's hard to offend me. I just updated, re-adjusted, recalibrated (using synonyms to make it clear, whatever word clicks for you) by belief to be more in line with reality in light of new evidence that just came in the form of a comment from a family member and my self-aware mind conscious of my behaviour working hard to try pointing out any inconsistency or gap between my behaviour, beliefs and reality (as perceived by me in the observable universe that I live in and assuming that it's not a simulation or illusion that we can't escape from, and hence need to understand to form beliefs as close to true reality as possible in order to act in a way that helps me maximize the probability of me achieving my desired goals, which is also a process in itself as I try to set goals according to processes, yet ther eare exceptions when it's about meaning, as I explain elsewhere but won't elaborate here because I'm already going too off-topic.) even though it was tried and sleepy. I realized that I do get offended, but not in a way that you might expect me to.

I don't get offended when anyone calls me names or says anything with the intention to hurt me, I simply don't care about such things, and that's still true as far as I know to the best of my knowledge based on or jusging by my actions till now. But I do get offended when 1) my working memory and subconscious mind is full of questions and philosophical theories I've been reading or writing that might have a pessimistic outlook regarding the state of society or the nature of reality, and my mind is occupied by trying to grasp it's implications, and 2) it's family so people I know well and so don't try to act too formal or make any extra effort to stay in my system-2 conscious brain and make a deliberate conscious mental effort to monitor my behaviour, and 3) Someone says something that triggers something in my brain that might related to some of the negative implications of the philosophies I've been trying to understand, and 4) I was sleepy.

And so I snap yet catch myself soon and learn from it, writing it down so it's embedded into my own memory and so others who read this could learn not just from my experience but also how I'm thinking about it and trying to extract lessons that could help me be more rational in the future so as to not repeat the same mistakes again (not just the same specific mistakes- that's useless- but to extract general principles and avoid the whole category, family or set of mistakes that the mistake I made falls into; which just in case you're wondering doesn't require any apriori knowledge, just a brain and ability to think and reason, and my using different terminology based on my vocabulary doesn't mean that you already don't do all this or aren't capable of doing all this if I state it as explicitly and clearly as I am now, though I'm unsure of my ability to convey ideas clearly and articulate them in a way that's easy to understand but I'm working on that. You could also just have the same mental representation or ideas mapped to a different set of words or symbols, which is what I was trying to hint at earlier.)

So, basically what happened is similar to what I described in this post. If the conditions are right, any human is capable of anything. That's Carl Jung's Shadow Theory summarized for you, perhaps oversimplified but that shall suffice for our current discussion. Even the most sweet person would, with the right environment, family and inclinations, be capable of commiting atrocities more unethical than Hitler, which is demonstrated by psychological experiments such as the Milgram experiment, Stanford Prison experiment, and several others I don't currently remember the names of but you could just look it up on the net, read my other posts where I might have mentioned them, or just send me a message if you're interested.

So, under the right conditions, as my brain was already sleepy and psychological experiments show how we're more prone to irrational behaviour when we're sleepy, several books but I currently remember only Dan Ariely's, and so there's not anything wrong with getting angry, it's just an emotion that your brain generates, the system-1 of your brain that you don't control, but what matters is that you relaize your mistake, if you believe that getting angry is a mistake, and correct yourself and take measures to preven it from happening again. You admit your mistake and apologize if required or necessary but more importantly learn your lesson and why you acted the way you did, what you think about it, is it consistent with your values and beliefs, what it tells you about your brain etc. (Not so)

Fun fact: This incident happened the same day as the event with the bioethics professor that I described in the edit of 'Veganism' and so my mom commented to me how these animals with the German Shepherd and street dogs displaying behaviour which could be easily taken to be evidence of emotions but I explained how such behaviour is not any evidence either in favour of or against of non-human animals having any internal subjective mental state or experience called qualia, and it could simply be explained by simple input-output response to external stimuli. Now, it's important to know that I'm not saying that they don't have any subjective experience; in fact I personally believe that not just non-human animals, but even plants are sentient and conscious, even though the professor in the event gave me some references and readings that show how plants probably aren't sentient, yet I presented him with some good logical arguments that he admitted complicated this matter and made it very unclear, and that they don't know and can't say (check out the Veganism post edit) here however I'm simply saying how the existence of any subjective mental state cannot be inferred from observable behaviour.

Also as I mentioned in my post about Asperger's, I my brain gave me these ideas again at a time when I was walking with my mom and supposed to focus on the present moment and still I tried to use mnemonics to hold the ideas in my working memory and had to take out my (now digital) notepad to write in short notes ideas that I could elaborate on later when I returned, and of course my mom scolded me again for writing while I'm supposed to be walking and looking around or whatever (Just in case you're wondering or thinking I am supposed to pay attention to a walk, I do realize the importance of mindfulness and derive great pleasure from paying attention to the present moment and all the incoming sensory information, an ability I'm grateful for and do my best to enjoy while I can, like the street light falling on the road and the gentle air blowing, the subjective experience of it that somehow these objective observable external events cause me to experience and that I greatly prize.)

But I unsuccessfully try to explain to my mother (once again, despite knowing it's a lost cause, yet I'm conditioned to justify and as I mentioned earlier I was sleepy) that I'm noting them down because my brain won't leave me along till I don't and so I won't be able to focus on the present moment with my working memory full of the ideas, and how it's relevant to my research interests and how these questions and project ideas would allow me to.. you get it. Read my post about Asperger's for similar incidents. PS: I should go out for walks more often, as it seems to help my brain generate new ideas and speed up the insight generation process by allowing me to make previously unknown connections between my past personal experiences, previously acquired knowledge or information, and my other research interests, ideas, projects, values, beliefs or goals.