LarrySanger.org

There are no NPCs

International travel drives home that insight that, contrary to a put-down used by immature people, and consistent with Jordan Peterson’s frequent observation that our biographies are all fascinating, there are no NPCs in the world: the variety of human experience is stunning.

Yesterday I was delayed (here in Tokyo) by a long, long queue of pretty young Japanese women, all dressed exactly alike (black skirt, white blouse). I was told they had been interviewing for jobs. When I asked why they dressed all alike, I was told simply “Japanese culture.” I instantly imagined someone watching the parade of future businesswomen and thinking of them as interchangeable drones, or movie extras, or “NPCs.” But I am incapable of viewing them that way.

These ladies were not “NPCs.” Each had her own story; the perspective of each would, upon sufficient examination, be fascinating. The fact that they were dressed alike, while perhaps odd to Westerners like myself, is meaningless when it comes to their real individuality.

If the error of racism is dehumanization, its opposite is to look past apparent, reductive commonalities to what is unique, contextualized, and valuable in each of us. And that ultimately comes down to our minds—to how we think things through. I don’t mean just our thought processes, but also the many products thereof, including our culture: philosophy, religion, musical tastes, how we conduct ourselves, our fundamental values. These things you must be capable of considering and tolerating, not necessarily supporting. I mean conversation of the sort that friends have, in which, while there might be some give and take and even occasional harshness, there is both sympathy, if not for position, then for common humanity, and a sincere desire to comprehend a point of view.

No one can claim to be enlightened (or “woke”) on issues of race, gender, etc., if they are capable of dismissing whole classes of other people. The problem of prejudice has as its root an inability to consider others as individuals. And you can’t claim to be tolerant if you are incapable of enjoying, without disgust, a conversation with a very different person, even a person with features you dislike or disagree with. (Of course you can’t expect to like everything about everyone.)

So let me ask some hard questions.

  • Democrats: are you capable of having such a conversation with Republicans? Republicans, can you talk seriously with Democrats without giving up in disgust?
  • Committed feminists and men’s rights activists, could you talk to each other without quitting in horror? I don’t mean you have to tolerate abuse (I don’t); but if they’re just saying stuff you dislike, but politely, can you handle it?
  • Socialists, could you have a beer with a libertarian? Libertarians, will the thought that the person you’re boozing with would love for you to be taxed at 70% (or whatever) permanently turn you off?

Etc., etc.

Even better, can you look past your disagreements and see lovely things about the other person?

You are intolerant, you are bigoted, if you are incapable of these sorts of conversations. Sorry to be harsh, but it’s an important truth a lot of people seem not to realize, and they need to start doing so.

I doubt anybody really disagrees with me, too. I’d be fascinated to hear if anybody did. Many of us just need to grow a little more, and get off our high horses, and our social and political discourse could be radically improved.

How about it?

by

Larry Sanger

“Internet Knowledge Organizer.” Currently President of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, started Wikipedia and various other educational and reference sites. Ph.D., Philosophy, Ohio State, 2000. [read more]

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Please do dive in (politely). I want your reactions!

4 responses to “There are no NPCs”

  1. Seth Finkelstein

    Larry, well, I don’t think it’s really up for debate that we’re all
    individuals (joke – voice in the back says “I’m not!”). But also, I
    don’t think it goes very far at all. That is, what you say is true –
    “inability to consider others as individuals” in some abstract sense.
    However, it’s on the level of we should all love one another.

    There’s a saying: If your solution to some problem relies on “If
    everyone would just …”, then you do not have a solution.

    It’s too simplistic. It’s a cliche that plenty of concentration camp
    commandants were cultured intellectuals who could engage in learned
    discourse about music and literature. That didn’t stop them from
    participating in mass murder.

    Look at it this way: If social media appeals to the worst in us,
    preaching at everyone to be better won’t have much effect. Even worse,
    it has the potential to end up being used as selective enforcement
    against the powerless, for being uncivil about their oppression.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Seth, I haven’t offered a solution. I’ve described a problem, though. I’m not saying that the ability to engage in learned discourse will save the world. I’m saying that the ability to discuss things with another person in a way that evinces respect and attention to nuanced differences, and without reducing that person to a simplistic caricature (as some people do with the epithet “NPC”), then you can’t be (or at least, you it’s much less likely that you are) bigoted toward that other person. And dehumanization of your opponent is a problem even if your side is (relatively?) “powerless,” or not in the ascendancy. In fact, if the “powerless” seem to get a pass for its intolerance, the rabble on the other side will become only more intolerant as well. Human beings on all sides have a basic thirst for fairness.

      Reply
      1. Seth Finkelstein

        When you said “The problem of prejudice has as its root an inability
        to consider others as individuals.” and combined with later on “Many
        of us just need to grow a little more, and get off our high horses,
        and our social and political discourse could be radically improved.”,
        and from “Sorry to be harsh, but it’s an important truth a lot of
        people seem not to realize, and they need to start doing so.” (note
        “need”), I took that all combined overall to imply that you were
        advocating an idea that “considering others as individuals” is a
        necessary and sufficient *solution* to the “[t]he problem of prejudice”.

        Hence the point “If everyone would just … [consider others as individuals]”,
        then you do not have a solution.

        I suggest “…the ability to discuss things with another person in a
        way that evinces respect … ” etc, while of course a laudable
        quality, is generally highly overrated in terms of overall
        effectiveness at the individual level. It may have some influence
        towards a specific person. But I believe there are much more important
        structural factors which drive prejudice and polarization.
        Outrage-mongering is primary a business model, not a personal moral weakness.

        And that sort of “high horses” framework has a very bad failure-mode.
        When you say, “You are intolerant, you are bigoted, if you are
        incapable of these sorts of conversations”, that can lead into
        reactionary rants about the-real-racists and similar. Yes, giving the
        powerless an absolute pass is not justified. That’s too far in one
        direction. But there’s also going too far in the other direction.
        Pundits who serve power, and scour the world for examples of oppressed
        people venting and griping, then parade it all around to comfort the
        comfortable and afflict the afflicted. I’m not saying you’re doing this
        now, but it’s something to beware, to make sure one doesn’t fall into.

        Reply
  2. Conrad DiDiodato

    “And that ultimately comes down to our minds—to how we think things through.”

    Thanks for the challenge, Larry. I have a suggestion.

    I will propose a solution. A philosophical solution grounded in a tradition of Language Philosophy that sadly does not guide intelligent discourse as much as it once did. And I will invoke the name of John Searle. I will even dare to say that there is a way to distinguish between “true” and “false” beliefs about the world based logic and observation of the workings of the world.

    To begin, I prefer to regard ” thinking” as a “cultural artifact”. Spacetime curvature, for example, happens to be one buoyed by the full weight of scientific evidence. But the idea sprang in the brain of one extraordinary human being clearly associated with a stage in the history of science.

    True statements must be defined by their primary content (the facts) and their form of expression. If, for example, religious people get their way, we must all act as passive recipients of truths–usually through divine intermediaries– that there is no way to deny. Critical reasoning is being dangerously short-circuited.Criticism will always reveal the “conditions of satisfaction” necessary to be met if statements and beliefs about the world are to “match the world”. Criticism will always make a clear distinction between fantasy and imagination and matters of fact.

    The Aztec calendar, on the other hand, is a cultural artifact that is not supported by scientific evidence.

    Furthermore, there’s no difference between my use of “cultural artifact” and, say, Popper’s “falsifiability” thesis. Truth is an active negotiation between the way things are and intelligent discussion of how human knowledge gains access to these things. In Popper’s view, humans are not the passive recipients of external reality: truths are the product of “active adaptations, the result of mutations…the precursor of hypotheses” (from ‘͟T͟h͟e͟ ͟T͟w͟o͟ ͟F͟u͟n͟d͟a͟m͟e͟n͟t͟a͟l͟ ͟P͟r͟o͟b͟l͟e͟m͟s͟ ͟o͟f͟ ͟t͟h͟e͟ ͟T͟h͟e͟o͟r͟y͟ ͟o͟f͟ ͟K͟n͟o͟w͟l͟e͟d͟g͟e͟)

    Why are we more likely to consider an Aztec system of communication or strange Japanese dress codes a “cultural artifact” and not say Tim-Berners Lee’s creation of the World Wide Web in 1989?In sum, all human creations are cultural artifacts: Einstein’s “Special Theory of Relativity”, an introductory “White Paper” on bitcoin, the ‘Sagrada Familia’, “The Federalist Papers” by Alexander Hamilton, Japanese dress codes etc etc

    And if they are cultural artifacts, they are each of them subject to the same “conditions of satisfaction” (as John Searle would say) as all our statements of fact and beliefs about the world. I believe it is possible to separate “true” from “false” statements about religious beliefs and foreign dress codes. It takes a little courage and intellectual honesty.

    I disagree that religious beliefs are cultural constructs and not, say, scientific theories. Mind works actively in both areas. Scientific theories and religious beliefs are both equally products of discovery and the language that conveys them. The only appreciable difference is that science enjoys the benefit of empirical evidence. It’s necessary, in other words, to make an important linguistic distinction (after John Searle) between beliefs or statements (where I must change my beliefs if they do not “match the world”)and desires (where I must try to change the world if the world does not match my desires).

    Scientific theories, as a language of statements about the world, fall in the former category; religious beliefs, on the contrary, as expressions of desire that certain religious articles of faith be true, cannot appeal to the world since the frustrated believer has the ridiculous task of showing that any realities that oppose his religious desires have to be fixed in the way that false scientific statements can be amended by making them conform to the true nature of things.

    Radicalism is precisely the position of religious folk who quite literally try to change the realities of those who do not accept their religious viewpoints. And oftentimes violence is their primary method of choice.

    I’ll conclude by saying that truth can be arrived at through “criticism” or the analysis of statements or beliefs about the world–whatever their sources, traditions or contexts– in terms of content and form. It’s a matter of considering the logic and psychology of a statement. Obviously, how we express our beliefs (the psychological component) is a function of its claim (the logical component) that our our beliefs conform to the world.

    A religious fanatic or racist, trying to short-circuit rational discussion, will try to meet the conditions of truth or falsity by willfully making the world conform to his version of the world. The fanatic’s is a perverted “mind-to-world direction of fit” (Searle). In other words, the fanatic or racist substitutes religious or racial for scientific “causal” connections to the world.

    Reply

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