I'll put it this way: there are a lot of people, including many here, who are ignorant and insensitive; and in this very conversation, there are quite a few people who are unapologetically so. They don't even know how ignorant or insensitive they are being, because they seem surprised and/or defensive when it is pointed out to them.
And when confronted with this feedback, instead of responding with humility, open-mindedness, and intellectual curiosity, they seek shelter in groups or try to clumsily defend their ignorance through whataboutism, slippery-slope arguments, unrelated grievances, or other forms.
Alternatively, they question the entire premise of social norms or morality, such as what PG has done here. People like him are intelligent enough to know that they cannot attack the truth and defend a lack of respect head-on. Instead, they try to mount a flank attack by publishing pieces such as this that appeal to selfish audiences who care more about their individual freedom than our need to work together to build a better society. It's not super surprising that they do this; after all, controversy and endless argument makes them money.
> Alternatively, they question the entire premise of social norms or morality, such as what PG has done here.
This isn't a deflection, though, it's the core point. What PG (and the rest of us) are trying to communicate is precisely that we hold different concepts of social norms and morality which used to be common in our circles. Among my friends up until the late 2000s, "insensitivity" was a minor character flaw and "ignorance" was no flaw at all. I still remember how shocked I was the first time I heard the phrase "educate yourself", because the idea it expressed was completely foreign to me - the people I personally knew who were passionate about some idea or another were always happy and excited to talk about it with people who weren't familiar.
Thank goodness it's not like that anymore. I remember those days too. People thought we were insufferable jerks back then, too, but they weren't on the Internet to tell us so. They were telling us in real life, but many of us weren't receptive to it.
> I still remember how shocked I was the first time I heard the phrase "educate yourself", because the idea it expressed was completely foreign to me - the people I personally knew who were passionate about some idea or another were always happy and excited to talk about it with people who weren't familiar.
I think what happens is, after a while, smart people get tired of exerting the effort to provide basic information over and over again to people who could find it by way of a trivial Google search.
There are more- and less-effective ways to communicate. I agree that turning people off is a bad outcome. I don't necessarily recommend using those words head-on; rather, I try to summon facts, history, law, etc. in order to bring more knowledge to the table. Similarly, I try to help people see things from other people's perspectives, or try to help them complete their initial thoughts to their logical (and often absurd) conclusions so that they might see things differently.
Sometimes it works; but more often than not, it doesn't. People can be really freaking stubborn. They really don't like being proved wrong.
And when confronted with this feedback, instead of responding with humility, open-mindedness, and intellectual curiosity, they seek shelter in groups or try to clumsily defend their ignorance through whataboutism, slippery-slope arguments, unrelated grievances, or other forms.
Alternatively, they question the entire premise of social norms or morality, such as what PG has done here. People like him are intelligent enough to know that they cannot attack the truth and defend a lack of respect head-on. Instead, they try to mount a flank attack by publishing pieces such as this that appeal to selfish audiences who care more about their individual freedom than our need to work together to build a better society. It's not super surprising that they do this; after all, controversy and endless argument makes them money.