i’m going to just start RTing people inveighing against the evils of cynicism without comment because a world with more credulous people is advantageous and if you can be made more credulous by that sort of thing then you deserve to be
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Replying to @chaosprime
Oh, rubbish. "Cynicism" and "Credulousness" are not opposites.
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Replying to @StevenBrust
there are competing definitions but they’re at least opposed if not precise opposites in the one i subscribe to
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Replying to @chaosprime @StevenBrust
there's a difference between skepticism, demanding evidence for claims, and cynicism, a spiritually corrosive immunity to passion in any endeavor. a substantial difference.
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Replying to @palecur @StevenBrust
that isn’t what i mean by cynicism and sounds suspiciously like pessimism. by cynicism i mean distrust of people’s nominal motives.
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Replying to @chaosprime @StevenBrust
that is, uh, a fairly bespoke definition of the term
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Replying to @palecur @StevenBrust
i consider it quite originalist actually
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Replying to @palecur @StevenBrust
what even is this late-coming revisionist “cynicism” that everybody hates and nobody likes, anyway? it never seems defined beyond “blob of stuff i don’t like”
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my main association with it is when you point out how basic adversarial advantage seeking will make somebody’s do-gooding program worse than useless they call you cynical to shut you up
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Replying to @chaosprime @palecur
Do you see a distinction between observing that apparent altruism is sometimes self-serving, and denying the existence of altruism?
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Replying to @StevenBrust @palecur
yeah, i define altruism in terms such that why you’re doing it has no bearing
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