Ignoring most of this, because you really are just talking about your own assumptions about what other people are thinking, which are nothing to do with me.
However your example:
> You dislike all my examples, try this one "Nobody needs a fossil fuel engine car". Obvious, right? Electrics are available and better in every way (just ask your favorite tesla owner). Telling people they can do fine without FB because you do is a bit like telling them they can do fine without gasoline because you do. Even when technically true for some values of "fine" and "need", it's not useful.
Is interesting for two reasons.
On the one hand, it’s just as bad as your prior ones, because the impact of doing without a car at all will be for many people quite significant in a way that I maintain is simply not the case with Facebook.
I know all kinds of people who have stopped using Facebook and it just hasn’t been a big deal, unlike all the examples you bring up.
On the other hand, I would imagine most people would simply accept that electric cars are a viable alternative to gasoline cars today, and that they will eventually switch to one in the future at some point, even if the economics don’t make sense now, which again makes this analogy just inapplicable to talking about Facebook.
What I take from this is that you are arguing against an amalgam of views you have seen elsewhere and trying to dispel a kind of misunderstanding that is somehow implicit to what you have seen.
I don’t really have anything to do with all that.
What I’m suggesting is that you dispense with these analogies, and simply consider the possibility that people don’t actually need Facebook, and that quitting Facebook wouldn’t actually have much impact for most people. Of course there are exceptions, but that’s not the point.
Being willing to consider this possibility sheds light on Facebook’s own behavior as well as the current situation with regard to what would make things better.
Why would you think it ‘laughable’ that people don’t know their own best interests? That seems to just trivialize a complex issue.
Many of us hold that it is important for society to treat people as though they do, but for the most part that is an ethical assumption that restrains abusive institutions. It’s equally true that most people know that they don’t know their own best interests in many ways, and we all obviously hold many false beliefs about both ourselves and the world. It’s pretty easy to think something is more (or less) important to you than it actually is.
Ok, you haven’t said anything remotely convincing to me as to why these are a actually different category, rather than a scale. And you seem to be misunderstanding what I’m truly if to say prettty consistently. Regardless of whose “fault” that is , this really isn’t a good forum for getting into properly, so I guess I’m out.
However your example:
> You dislike all my examples, try this one "Nobody needs a fossil fuel engine car". Obvious, right? Electrics are available and better in every way (just ask your favorite tesla owner). Telling people they can do fine without FB because you do is a bit like telling them they can do fine without gasoline because you do. Even when technically true for some values of "fine" and "need", it's not useful.
Is interesting for two reasons.
On the one hand, it’s just as bad as your prior ones, because the impact of doing without a car at all will be for many people quite significant in a way that I maintain is simply not the case with Facebook.
I know all kinds of people who have stopped using Facebook and it just hasn’t been a big deal, unlike all the examples you bring up.
On the other hand, I would imagine most people would simply accept that electric cars are a viable alternative to gasoline cars today, and that they will eventually switch to one in the future at some point, even if the economics don’t make sense now, which again makes this analogy just inapplicable to talking about Facebook.
What I take from this is that you are arguing against an amalgam of views you have seen elsewhere and trying to dispel a kind of misunderstanding that is somehow implicit to what you have seen.
I don’t really have anything to do with all that.
What I’m suggesting is that you dispense with these analogies, and simply consider the possibility that people don’t actually need Facebook, and that quitting Facebook wouldn’t actually have much impact for most people. Of course there are exceptions, but that’s not the point.
Being willing to consider this possibility sheds light on Facebook’s own behavior as well as the current situation with regard to what would make things better.
Why would you think it ‘laughable’ that people don’t know their own best interests? That seems to just trivialize a complex issue.
Many of us hold that it is important for society to treat people as though they do, but for the most part that is an ethical assumption that restrains abusive institutions. It’s equally true that most people know that they don’t know their own best interests in many ways, and we all obviously hold many false beliefs about both ourselves and the world. It’s pretty easy to think something is more (or less) important to you than it actually is.