#103 – On judging people
#103 – On judging people
Why society has it backwards
People are not their ideas, they’re defined as the capacity to create them. So no person can inherently or inevitably be evil, but one can hold bad ideas in their mind that can cause objectively evil consequences. In The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch termed the principle of optimism, “All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge.” Good intentions can have bad outcomes. Evil is rarely caused due to the intention of evil but due to ignorance. It follows that what really needs our judgment are ideas, not the sources of ideas.
Nevertheless, knowing this shouldn’t deter us from making rational (and fallible) judgements about people. Though personhood has nothing to do with the ideas in a person’s mind, our personalities are entirely moulded by our ideas (some of which may be unconscious). And since the differences between the minds of individual human beings can be as vast as the diversity among different animal species, judging people becomes a crucial part of our as-yet-known-to-be finite lives.
There’s irony in the common practice of telling people that it is wrong to judge someone. The people who tell you that you shouldn’t judge others are judging you. And they’re judging you using an irrational criteria.
Giving everyone equal time is not giving your time to anyone at all.
“When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.”
―Ayn Rand
It’s important to consciously create strong boundaries for deciding who you want to be a part of your life and who you do not. You cannot change a person’s values for them. But you can choose who you spend your time with.
The weekly roundup
1. Book I’m reading
The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer
2. Podcast I’m listening to
3. Elon vs. Zuck
“The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.”
— Elon Musk
Elon Musk could be fighting Mark Zuckerberg in a cage match in Vegas (evidence).
@dezmondOliver on Twitter made a compare chart that seems pretty accurate:
This should be entertaining!
4. Former editor of Spiked, Brendan O’Neill on free speech
“I believe it’s absolute. There should be no restrictions on it whatsoever. No hate speech laws, no public order legislation that targets speech, no libel laws, and the best response to speech that is wrong, or dangerous, or racist, or horrible, is always more speech. Never censorship, never laws, never putting somebody in prison.”
Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/arjunkhemani
Twitter: @arjunkhemani
Blog: arjunkhemani.com