I figured this would fit well in introductions since it's not a game or a crime post. I'm going to post things I have a question about. As I tell sales clerks, "You get to tell a customer where to go. Where is the...."
Okay, in order to improve my understanding skills, what is "intellectual dishonesty?" It was mentioned in another thread and it is on my mind.
I had not seen this prior and so I am sorry for the late reply.
There are many things and approaches that fall under this greater topic of intellectual dishonesty. Politicians absolutely often lean heavily on intellectual dishonesty and so do academics and zealots of different stripes.
The best way I can describe intellectual dishonesty in a way that identifies it most readily and certainly in the way that I most use the term is where people are being "sneaky" in how they purport to support a position or attack a position. But this sneakiness is a particular kind of sneakiness. It does not have to mean that what they are saying is completely dishonest.
For example, If someone made a joke and one you decided that this joke could under certain representations and by deliberately misreading the intent and removing it from context, could smear the teller, doing this would be intellectually dishonest. The joke may be seen as terrible and you in return could be elevated by railing against it. It may even make sense in the particular context you present it in. But what is equally true is that you chose to be intellectually dishonest in your efforts to smear someone. You were not willing to read the situation as you knew it and read it honestly and truthfully.
Another one off the top of my head may be the narrative that "Al hounded Zegh until he left". This is a good example in a lot of ways. Why? Because a case could absolutely be made for it INCLUDING an appeal I had not seen until a few days before he left that asked what he could do to make things stop (ultimately I responded to that but he was too far exacerbated and had a quick flare up with Scrap in the shoutbox and then disappeared). So is it true? Is it a complete and reasonable indictment? Does it mention anything about his early exchanges with me and what was said to me? Not at all. In fact, it could equally be as intellectually dishonest to say "Who knows why Zegh left? He talked some really bad shit about Al and then some time later bailed after he copped a bit of flack" This is intellectually dishonest too. So would blaming Scrap as the straw that broke the camel's back be as a reason for him leaving.
Once you look at this you probably see that it is almost made for people who are either ideological zealots or Narcissistic people who are wishing to use semantics and misrepresentation "cleverly" to win an argument at expense of being genuine (note: my lack of the use of the words truth or lie).
Worse still, if the intellectually dishonest person is reasonably clever enough, they give themselves a "way out" by claiming ignorance of any other possible interpretation. Gamerplayers and narrative spinners. Zealots of every hue and Every politician ever......and yes our Dear Leader Kim Jong Odeon himself are examples of the intellectually dishonest.
In summary. Intellectual dishonesty comes from a place where a person is prepared to deliberately contort and exaggerate and misrepresent an understanding of a situation or reading to infer, suggest or outright state something they would know is not truly representative of the nature of what they are representing.
