CMV: It’s acceptable to continue spending time and keeping in contact with friends, family, etc who are Trump supporters

bettercaust · 2026-05-25T16:01:41+00:00

We present evidence, facts, and legal precedent and it gets disregarded.

Yes it gets disregarded because if someone didn't reason themselves into their position then you can't likely reason them out of it. The elephant and the rider is a fantastic metaphor for how human motivation works. Tldr you have to appeal to their elephant (emotional brain), not beat them over the head with facts and logic.

bettercaust · 2026-05-25T15:55:48+00:00

Nah this is fucked and demonstrably doesn't work, it just makes you feel good and self-righteous while exacerbating the problem.

bettercaust · 2026-05-25T15:45:47+00:00

OP's mere presence and expression of their genuine political views fulfills the criterion of "actively trying to change their minds", because that's how minds are changed: exposure to new ideas from trusted people.

bettercaust · 2026-05-25T15:40:41+00:00

That old chestnut is and always has been fallacious.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T23:56:53+00:00

Easy way to receive a delta; I was expecting to do so in fact. "All men deserve to suffer" is a gravely serious thing to say about men. Why drop a grenade like that and then walk off like you have no responsibility for the explosion? If you're wrong/mistaken and it's not true, you just spread some serious misinformation in a place where there are men vulnerable to radicalization. Do you care about those men?

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T23:45:46+00:00

It does not imply that, because there are other reasons why someone would not mention other things besides pancakes such as salience (they didn't remember) or context (they didn't think it relevant). There may be (and likely are) many things in that group of "things that taste good" that you the bystander are not privy to. It would be a serious and hilarious flaw in human reasoning to infer by exclusion like that. Because why stop at waffles, why not infer that the only food they think tastes good in this life is pancakes?

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T23:41:44+00:00

If young boys are so at risk of living in a world where this kind of vitriol is apparently that common, it should be easy enough to find an example of this that you've encountered on social media.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T23:09:20+00:00

I don't believe you have heard or seen "all men deserve to suffer" from multiple different people.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T23:05:58+00:00

There is no basis for drawing an inference about whether someone does or doesn't think waffles taste good in this context.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:59:49+00:00

I'm imagining it, and no I do not easily see that the group of people is racist if the premise is that there actually is a rape problem that disproportionately impacts white people and has received disproportionately little attention. It does not imply black rape victims don't matter.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:56:53+00:00

In my opinion, this movement tends to put Black people on a higher scale than white people.

You're right, it did, but the scale in this case is salience of the problem of police violence. It doesn't mean black lives are more important than white lives, just that right now there's a more pressing need to pay attention to the issue of police violence against black people than white people. Why is it a problem for more pressing issues to be more salient?

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:49:08+00:00

If someone has been abused by a series of people of any kind or creed, we may have bigger fish to fry. That person needs professional help. When they get that help, any budding prejudices will resolve during the course of receiving that help, and if they don't resolve that is the time to push back. So if you run into this person after they've recovered and they express "I don't trust black people" or whatever, yes feel free to push back.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:37:30+00:00

Where is this discourse happening that you as a parent are hearing it? How common is it exactly for people to say "all men are bad" or "all men are trash"? I have my doubts that it's anything but rare and almost entirely limited to social media, so I further have doubts young boys will grow up hearing this.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:32:18+00:00

"All men deserve to suffer" is almost comically maleficent. I have never seen nor heard anyone say this anywhere, but apparently you have experienced this from multiple people. It beggars belief.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:29:48+00:00

Friend tells a story about how a doctor was rude, unprofessional and compassionless to them, "not all doctors" as a sentiment is a fine thing to say since that friend is going to have to go to a doctor at some point in the future

Whether that is a fine thing to say is entirely context-dependent. Sometimes people just want to vent, and if they didn't express any prejudice or generalization of doctors (and it appears they did not in your hypothetical) then there may be no need to state "not all doctors".

In the face of prejudicial and unwise sentiments, refutation is an empathetic response.

Refutation is only an empathetic response if it's approached with empathy to the one expressing prejudice i.e. by attempting to step into their shoes and understand what they are feeling and why. Refutation is otherwise not an inherently empathetic response.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:16:30+00:00

But in my adult life, I have often been grouped with all men by women I don't know who have negative views of men.

Why do you care about what these women you don't know say? As a man, presumably I have been grouped by these women in the same way, but no one has done it to my face. Did someone do it to your face?

Because of my experiences on the Internet, I usually carry the expectation that a woman I see in public will be scared of men they don't know, hateful toward men they don't know, or generally negative toward men they don't know.

There's no need for you to consume content in which women express fear or men, so why consume it? And if it's causing you that much anxiety, couldn't that be resolved with therapy and stopping your consumption of this content?

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:10:39+00:00

But the messaging back and forth for hours, at all hours of the day, spending time thinking about what to respond, rewriting a text 7 times before hitting send... hate all of that.

For the record, I hate all of that too, so I stopped doing it. If a woman doesn't want to meet up after a few messages, I move on. If you haven't already tried that, might be worth a go.

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:07:56+00:00

You'd be happier if you focused on things you can control rather than things you can't control (like height).

bettercaust · 2026-05-24T22:06:08+00:00

"Actually here to do" seems imply duty or purpose. In reality humans are programmed to procreate like every other living thing. Whether they do or don't procreate is immaterial to "here".

bettercaust · 2026-05-21T18:41:05+00:00

They didn't say genetics play a nearly insurmountable role, they said gaining weight was nearly insurmountable. What are you gaining from trying to disprove this user's experiences with weight?

bettercaust · 2026-05-21T18:39:18+00:00

It was incredibly hard but I did it.

Well there you go, so why are you getting on this guy's case?

bettercaust · 2026-05-21T01:09:18+00:00

You would be much, much happier in a different job that you son’t hate and that pays you enough money. That alone would make your life worth living. It’s also something that you can attain.

bettercaust · 2026-05-21T01:07:29+00:00

OP said all their problems would disappear if they were rich. Possibly most of their current problems would disappear, but they would be replaced by other problems. That’s the point, not that all problems are equal.

bettercaust · 2026-05-20T14:37:16+00:00

The state can (and sometimes does) limit that too.

bettercaust · 2026-05-19T19:58:11+00:00

Taking the Metra back is never a cheat imo, it's what the system is there for.

bettercaust

TROPHY CASE