Unpopular Opinion

The timbre and content of our conversation here combined with something I read from your account has led me to perseverate on this conversation, so I'm going to make a comment that's definitely off-topic to satisfy my brain.

When I received the first response in this thread, I became curious about who I was conversing with. I looked at your profile and saw this in the account bio (or whatever it's called here):

Independent thinker valuing discussions grounded in reason, not emotions.

And in this most recent comment in the thread:

I don't believe in free will nor self

I'm assuming that you are a determinist. I'm also a determinist! I believe that our actions and identity are ultimately the product of the way our brains interact with the environment around them. I believe that free will is an illusion many people see because the way our brain interacts with its environment is incredibly complicated and is almost impossible to quantify. I think we agree to some degree on this, although I could be totally wrong. I just wanted to see if I could establish a shared (if limited) understanding of how the brain do its thang based on the quote I've taken from this thread.

I wanted to write about emotions. I used to believe that emotions were not helpful when discussing fractious issues and when doing things like, say, software development. I've come to believe that I felt this way because I was not taught how to understand or process emotions. Because I didn't understand them, I was frustrated when they'd come to lead a conversation. I thought that if people could just be purely rational beings, we'd all be able to talk about hard things and come up with mutually beneficial solutions to our problems.

That sounds pretty naive because it is. I absolutely acknowledge that there are more nuanced arguments for why emotions should be kept out of debates, but I don't properly understand those arguments so I can't represent them here. Normally this would be enough for me to not make this comment, but I think I have a way to make my point that doesn't really depend on whether or not emotions should be involved in discussions.

Basically, I feel that it is impossible for two people to discuss something without that discussion involving emotions. I believe this is the case for the same reasons I believe in a deterministic universe (which is a ridiculous sentence lol, I sound so pompous right now). I think that a person's capability to express rational thought is either the result of emotions, or is inextricably linked to emotions. The human brain is a glorious fucking mess. The brain interacts with itself in ways that are just as dynamic and complicated as how the outside environment affects the brain. There's been a lot of research done to try and separate out what's responsible for cognition and emotion. Those efforts have failed, and there's now a lot of literature out there showing how you can't have one without the other. That's all really nice and cerebral and such, but I'm not qualified to talk about any of that and don't want to barf out another debate on the internet on "how does an brain work." There are enough of those. All I can do is talk about personal experience.

Like, emotions can be really useful in guiding rational thought. I'm a software developer by trade, and I've learned over the years that I architect, write, test, and debug software based on how I feel on a moment-to-moment basis. When I'm trying to filter a list, I just kinda let my fingers move and pound something out. I read it, and if I feel bad (e.g. anxious), I let my fingers delete some stuff and add more stuff, and I keep doing that until I'm happy. Sometimes I'll stop and think more consciously and "rationally" about what I'm doing, but like, I only do so when I've hit a point of feeling consistently unhappy for 3-5 minutes. My emotions and instincts have done most of the work in filtering out the contents of a list or coming up with a state machine or designing a class hierarchy or whatever, which is all pretty logical and rational shit. I work that way and my code works pretty well and is pretty fast and people generally like to read it and work with it. The times when I've struggled are when I've lacked the necessary instinct or "feel" for what's good and bad and have had to think purely rationally about what I'm doing.

I've found this to be true for debates as well. I'm far more convincing when I allow my emotions to guide my rational arguments. I've changed far more minds, and I've had my mind changed far more often when I include my emotions as an essential component of my rationality.

I'm just some random dude on the internet making a comment about something nobody asked about, so take this for what it is. I figured it'd be fun to write about, and I guess it was since I'm approaching kbin's 5000 character limit for a single comment.

For future reference, here is a direct link to the comment on my instance, and here is the contents of the comment:

I’m a cop and I can tell you that, at least in my country, you’d have no reason to not unlock your phone if you haven’t done anything.

I can understand that in some countries cops can be seen as criminals (and are behaving like criminals), but I don’t think a generality should be made. Just like a generality shouldn’t be made about people from an origin all doing the same bad thing.

Also don’t take advices from what you see on Lemmy as every user comes from a different country with different laws.

In my country, we can take your phone but we aren’t allowed to unlock it without your consent or without a prosecutor saying so.

I'm purposefully not including their username here in case they want to delete their comments at a later date.

That's a pretty rough thread to read. It makes me feel pretty damn bummed out. The cop (who I will refer to as "they", "them", and "the commenter" from now on) clearly believes in their position, and like, I get it. I think everybody would be happy to live in a world where following the belief that "you have nothing to hide" truly resulted in universally positive outcomes. They mention that cops in some countries act like criminals, which is a true (if perhaps incomplete) statement. I think there may be some defensiveness in their comment, but that's pretty natural when commenting on an article that's written on the basis that everyone doing their job is bad and should not be trusted. They probably have a hard job, and I'm guessing that part of the way they (and many cops) get through the day is to view their role as a protector of the innocent. That's not a groundbreaking statement or anything, but I figured I should include it. I'll also say that they did a pretty good job of avoiding aggressive language. It's natural to want to fight when dearly held beliefs are attacked, and they did a good job of avoiding that.

However, I can also understand how that comment makes some people very, very angry. For example, it makes me feel frustrated because I feel like it is missing important context (e.g. roughly where they're from and how the police and community interact there), and I feel that it is presenting an argument that is problematic and evidently untrue in some contexts. I also feel like it's a potentially reckless comment. When I read that comment, I feel I'm being told that I may be less safe if I try to maintain my right to privacy. I personally disagree with that idea, and I'm guessing that the people who made very aggressive responses feel much more strongly about that than I do. I won't claim to understand all the reasons why people are so angry at the police, so all I can do is share my reasons for feeling upset when reading that comment.

I dunno. I'm torn about that whole thread. I think the commenter was arguing in good faith and was communicating somewhat effectively, but I also don't think they considered how hurt and angry people are. It's not their job to avoid provoking trauma responses and angering random people on the internet. I have had times where I had to say something that I knew would really upset and activate my partner. However, I have found that I have better outcomes when I take some time to empathize before saying something that I know will potentially activate someone. I can hear them out, show empathy (or compassion if I have the resources to express it and am comfortable giving it), help them come back to the here-and-now, and then continue the discussion. That wasn't done, and the folks who have a hard time regulating their emotions made aggressive comments.

I don't feel like they were expressing vulnerable feelings, so I'm hoping that they had an emotional shield up and didn't experience harm. I'm sure it was hurtful, but I hope it wasn't harmful. I hope that the people who clearly feel such deep rage are eventually able to find peace and a safe place to recover from whatever shit they went through, assuming they have unprocessed shit to deal with. I obviously hope that we'll someday look back at police brutality some day and be horrified that we ever lived like that, but that's a nothingburger of a statement in this context. The commenter has expressed their desire to move on from the topic so I won't leave a comment over there, but I figured I'd share my thoughts here. There's not really a point to what I'm saying beyond that.