Comment by tristor
1 month ago
Evidence of what? That Lidden is autistic? None, other than the contents of the article and my own knowledge of those traits (that I myself have). That the Just World Fallacy is strong and we all get kicked in the pants because of our better expectations? My evidence is a good 40-50% of my entire life's story, where I have been punished repeatedly for doing the right thing.
To be clear, I am not being dismissive of your comment. I wish very deeply that it were true, and that I am wrong. Unfortunately I don't believe that to be the case.
It's dismissive to assign my argument to a Internet argument (your fallacy) rather than address its merits. I'm not wasting time on defending my argument against your fabrications about it; I stand by what I actually say. And wanting to be true and dismissing it is still dismissing it.
You don't know the outcome of the path not taken - lying, for example, also fails, much worse and much more often, and it fails in destroying your self-respect even when it 'succeeds' in some other narrow fashion.
Maybe you would have failed anyway. We all fail plenty. Being honest isn't usually sufficient - you need other skills and resources too. The skills and resources for being honest, IME, differ from those of liars - they take experience and failure to master, like any other sophisticated skils (including lying). Why not spend time mastering them? I promise it pays off far better - even when you fail spectacularly, you retain your self-respect, and you spend a lot less time doubting what you should do (though you still need to figure out how to do it effectively).
Whether the world - your world - is just or not is mainly up to you. You can't always succeed - liars don't get everything they want either - but you can have a big influence, on yourself and others. The world is what you make it.
The opposite of "an overabundance of honesty" is not lying. It's knowing when to not speak at all.
Perhaps rather than assuming I haven't mastered the skills of honesty, or that I am a dishonest person, you should really re-read what I wrote in all of my comments. I am not dismissing you, you are overreacting to a phrase I used which you understood differently than it was intended and has since been clarified.
It is a BS characterization - it wasn't something I said, but your imagination - and of course a characterization that served as something you could dismiss, which you did. Even the name of your fabricated characterization included the word "fallacy" - that doesn't leave much room to take the other person's idea seriously. It is much easier arguing with your personal strawperson than to understand a real person.
I didn't assume anything about you; I just made my point.