Thats possible they would be more careful. Something that came to mind from work that I wanted to share about that though. I’ve noticed personally, and with coworkers, that when working we think about things differently then as a customer. An example would be: as a customer I’m paying for $5-$10 drink. For that price I expect it made correctly. As a worker, I just see a drink to make. I’m better than most about it, but if its busy enough I just see a drink to get through. I don’t care about making it correctly (in some circumstances) I just want to get a drink and customer out. The fact that they paid for an overpriced drink doesn’t come to me at that moment.
You mentioned:
~yeah. I think those would help, but I wouldn’t be surprised that even if the workers were cognizant of the cost they may not care. Depending on the person, stress of the job, if they’re being rushed, or something else. They may just see the wheelchair as another thing to get through (even if they know the price). Get it through, deal with the consequences and stuff after.
I read through some comments. People are basically like “as a female, you can be ignored by most men or treated in a fake way, those are your choices”.
Looking at society more generally and ignoring gender issues, I wonder about how rare it is for anyone to actually engage with and take seriously someone else’s ideas, really listen and think about what they’re saying, etc. Like, does the typical person only get that from 0-10 people, usually only friends or family, in their lifetime? Are 0 and 1 the most common numbers? Do people usually only get it from peers or coworkers if they befriend those people first? I’m thinking about this in connection with the difficulty of getting anyone to participate in a serious, lengthy debate, which is a form of actually listening to other people’s ideas and taking them seriously. Maybe today it’s a lot to ask for someone to do that at all ever in their life, let alone with someone they disagree with and aren’t friends with (which is the typical scenario for debates). If taking people’s ideas seriously is rare and mostly only happens between friends/family, that’s a huge problem for science and some other fields where it should be happening a fair amount between people who work in the field who have disagreements or don’t personally work together.
Some people get famous enough to be studied by others, or they write a paper that gets a lot of citations and attention. That’s a type of getting serious attention, but if it’s just one or two papers, it’s often not thorough enough to do very much. And even someone very famous like Ayn Rand, while she got many thousands of people to spend a lot of time thoroughly studying her, she struggled to find anyone very good to talk with among all those people, who actually understood her points much. Similarly Leonard Peikoff, who I don’t think was a very good successor to Rand, himself has been unable to find any individual he thinks would be good to give Ayn Rand’s book copyrights to when he dies, even though he and Objectivism are certainly popular enough to get a lot of attention from a lot of people.
It’s common that people won’t really listen to what you’re saying when it’s literally their job to listen. Some examples:
Most doctors won’t listen to patients with a lot of chronic illnesses or a lot of rare illnesses. If a doctor sees 100 patients a month, then he should see a rare (1%) illness every month on average, but many doctors say “you don’t have that; it’s rare” routinely and approximately never listen, never identify rare diseases. (There’s also a gender bias where female patients are more likely to have their problems incorrectly blamed on anxiety, and are less likely to have pain taken seriously.)
In job interviews, the interviewer is being paid to be there, and it’s part of his job to listen to the applicant and try to understand them. But job interviewers frequently just form fast initial impressions based on superficial traits (like race, gender, accent or speech style, clothing, body language) and then ignore information that contradicts their first impression.
Cops often interrogate people based on a pre-existing belief, not in a truth-seeking way – they’re just trying to get certain predetermined information or outcomes, not really listening to what the person is saying.
Teachers often give generic answers instead of actually listening to specific questions.
Customer service staff often respond with generic answers that show they didn’t really read what you actually said, just skimmed it for a few keywords.
Peer reviewers often don’t seriously engage with a paper and figure out what it really means (which is, among other things, a lot of work, and would involve e.g. actually looking up some of the citations in the paper which I think is atypical behavior for peer reviewers).
Oh dang so a lot of doctors will get used to saying, “you don’t have a rare illness” and more likely not look into it further? That sounds scary. Like I’ll have to do my own research(correctly) and look at multiple doctors that are more willing to investigate.
One time in post covid pandemic I went to the ER to get checked for being unable to breathe correctly and I was really lightheaded. I was so close to just being treated as a covid patient until I got kind of mad and ended up saying, “I had covid like 3 months ago, it’s not covid.” Then they checked me and I had a certain kind of flu.
I dont know exactly what helped me in that situation like I dont think should get mad at care providers but should remain factual about my situation.
I think this is a good take. I also agree with him that most kids would have done the same. I’m not sure if I would’ve to the extent of allowing myself to get burned or not. Maybe I would’ve? I like to think I wouldn’t, but that could be wishful thinking. I never had an opportunity like that to stand up for myself, thankfully, but I had other more typical ones.
At high school, I often wouldn’t show up to some classes that I hated, and I would get in trouble for that occasionally. But it never occurred to me that I was under no obligation to do anything they wanted me to do and wasn’t obliged to stay at their detentions or anything. I think I felt guilty for not showing up to those classes. I had to do a lot of lying to the school staff. It makes me feel kind of sick to think I didn’t just say “you don’t have any right to tell me what to do, I’m not going to your detention”. They ran the detentions after school, and so it also put my parents out that they had to drive to come and collect me afterwards because I missed the school bus by the time it was over. My parents were never upset at me for getting things like detentions, but they never did anything like tell the school that they weren’t allowed to keep me for detentions. I think if I had had more of a problem with it then they might’ve.
Detentions are normal and have broad approval from society, school authorities, parents and even many children. Lots of kids get detention.
Being significantly burned is abnormal and is widely disapproved of. It’s a rare thing to happen to school kids and people see it as the teacher making a serious mistake.
They’re not the same. It doesn’t work well to stand up to authorities because you don’t like something. It’s important to judge what orders the authority is and isn’t authorized (by higher authorities and public opinion) to give. Look for cases where someone mistakenly exceeds their authority in a way that will cause significant harm. Like if your teacher asked you to kiss him, that would be another example where you should say “no” instead of always complying with authority.
Does that make sense? If so, can you brainstorm more cases where standing up to authority is appropriate? Scenarios involving other authorities besides teachers are fine too.
I think so. At least this part: There are things normally considered within and things considered outside of someone’s authority. Detention is normal and giving it is widely considered within the authority of school staff. Ordering students to do something that will cause them to get burned is widely considered to be outside of the authority of school staff and a big mistake. My detention example differs from the burning example in the sense that the former is considered normally within school authority, and the latter would be considered abnormal, definitely outside the school’s authority, and an abuse of authority.
Sure, I can see that. The gym teacher ordered the kids to do things that was outside of his authority, and my teachers ordered me to do something that was within their authority.
I’m not sure what you mean here. Work well for what exactly? Do you mean that for the person standing up to it that it could be bad for them, perhaps worse than complying? Maybe you mean that it doesn’t work well to change things if you disagree?
What if you disagree with them and everyone else that they have the authority to do what they’re hoping to do? Wouldn’t you be morally obliged to stand up to them?
I have a similar question to above: important for what exactly? Important for deciding what to do in the face of authority? Important for analysing cases of potential misconduct by authorities?
Standing up to authority cuz you don’t like it doesn’t work well cuz you’ll be seen as a trouble maker and people won’t be on your side I think.
They aren’t the same. One is approved of and normal and the other one is abnormal and not approved of. I think liking or not liking either one isn’t going to help you see how they can hurt you.
Thinking about my sentence, I dont think it’s right. I think ET’s sentence was talking about methods of judgement not the outcomes of a method.
I think this sentence gives an idea about what the paragraph is about:
It talks about how to judge authorities. Also it would make sense to judge authorities based on what they’re authorized to do. Also, if the paragraph was talking about how bad it is for students to stand up to authorities then the following sentences after the first two would say something like it’s common for kids to get ignored and mistreated after saying they don’t like an order(my example of a stat).
No, actually. I swear I think I get some parts of the post but Im not getting it all as a whole. I think it’s too high level for me.
I think you should stand up to authority when the outcome is better for you. I don’t think you should be a martyr. If you disagree with everyone and still disobey, then you’re probably gonna get punished more.
If the authority figure’s punishment is widely accepted by society, then it’s almost like a law. They both have power and authority over you and can therefore coerce you with force.
We cannot disobey laws we think are bad. What we can do is speak up so long as we have free speech (if we don’t have free speech, I still don’t think you should be martyr).
I think I agree with Objectivism here:
A forced compliance is not a sanction. All of us are forced to comply with many laws that violate our rights, but so long as we advocate the repeal of such laws, our compliance does not constitute a sanction. Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom.
So you aren’t morally obliged to stand up, because if the compliance is forced then you aren’t sanctioning it. And morally speaking you should do what is in your self-interest; does disobeying lead to better or worse outcome? You aren’t necessarily sanctioning either way.
Right so for the goal of fighting unjust laws, disobedience and martyrdom are a mistake. Unjust laws can’t be fought this way. They have to be fought ideologically.
This makes sense. Disobedience isn’t way to change a law. Changing a law requires other things like changing some peoples minds about the law. Disobedience is also not necessary to avoid morally sanctioning something: forced compliance doesn’t constitute a breach of your integrity or a sanction for what you consider wrong.
Martyring can be a consequence of disobedience, and martyring is just self-destructive.
So, is the moral issue not compliance or not but sanction or not? That makes sense to me.
I think can see now how you wouldn’t be morally obliged to stand up to them i.e disobey them.
So is what makes my disobedience not self-destructive in this case the fact that many others would consider that really bad and abnormal too? Like I could go and tell the teacher in the class next door, my parents, or any school staff, and they’d presumably be outraged and support me?
But, in the case of something widely accepted as within the authority of a teacher, disobedience might have worse outcomes than compliance. I can imagine this would’ve been the case back when it was normal and widely accepted that teachers had the authority to physically beat children with canes. I think further disobedience then would work out worse for me than just complying with the initial beating.
Including also my response to @ActiveMind, am I on the right track?
I’m intending to do this after I’ve had more feedback on whether it seems like I understand. I am interpreting this as tutoring related assignment and that’s why I’ve asked for more direct feedback from you. If I wasn’t interpreting it that way I wouldn’t make a post that required your attention so directly.
OK, then one thing to consider is what the TikTok author was trying to say and his viewpoint. E.g. do you think he would agree or disagree that you should have refused to comply with detention?
I wrote down some parts I thought were key to understanding the authors point in the video.
He thinks there is something really important beyond the incident to understand; He’s not bringing it up for outrage.
One of the most difficult lessons for a kid to learn is how to relate to authority.
Kids must be taught that there are times when it is okay to defy authority.
None of the kids involved thought they had any option but to comply. Most kids would’ve done the same.
Key to understanding the lesson is knowing that the world full of people in positions of power who know they can take advantage of that.
He thinks the problem is how to relate to authority, given the world is full of authorities ready to abuse their power.
He thinks that it’s really important and difficult to know when it is okay to defy and question authority.
He says why he thinks this is difficult: in our culture being a good kid (“good christian kid”) means being obedient, and kids are terrified of being “in trouble”.
He says why it’s important: the world is full of authorities ready to abuse their power, and the video contains an example of the harm it can do. (I looked up the Mount Washington McDonald’s incident he mentions too, and it’s horrifying. I’d never heard of those incidents)
I may be missing something, but it seems to me that he doesn’t clearly give an answer for when it’s okay to defy authority. He says kids should be taught that there are times when when they should do that. But he doesn’t tell us how to know when those times are.
I don’t think what he’s saying can be taken to mean that he think’s that it’s okay to just defy authority when you disagree with them. I don’t think he would’ve agreed that my case with detention was another example of the type of thing he was talking about. I suspect he wouldn’t agree that I should’ve refused to comply with detention.
I think the way I said this makes it seem like I just realised, or learned this lesson from watching this video. That’s not the case. I should’ve wrote "But it never occured to me at the time that I was under no obligation. . . "
Edit: Removed an accidental double negative that gave the wrong meaning.
