Comment on Why can't I argue against claims of suffering?
TootSweet@lemmy.world 9 months agoDo you have some reason to think they’re not suffering? That they’re feigning suffering to manipulate you or something? If not, don’t be a dick and tell them they’re not. That’s basically gaslighting.
Imagine going to the doctor and saying you’ve been having terrible headaches and the doctor’s response is “I don’t think you’re having headaches.”
No one can prove they’re actually having any particular feeling. But everyone has feelings constantly. If they’re saying they feel a certain way, their assertion is automatically more valid than your denial. You don’t live in their head. They do.
People sometimes feel a certain way for no apparent reason. (Depression, for instance, is sometimes idiopathic.) But it’s not as if people aren’t really having feelings. And you have no basis on which to tell them they’re not. Nor that their feelings are baseless (or for that matter not baseless.)
If someone says they feel a certain way, there’s usually no constructive benefit that can come from denying that they even have those feelings.
I personally suspect that in most cases even those who use their own feelings to manipulate others (folks suffering from “cluster B” personality disorders, for instance) generally are still subjectively having the feelings they use to manipulate. If they say “you hurt me deeply” because you set a reasonable boundary or some such, it’s probably the case that they do indeed feel “deeply hurt” even if they are using that feeling as a weapon against you. (And, again, don’t be assuming they are unless you’ve got good reason to.) Denying that they feel that way is a) probably strictly false and b) completely unconstructive even if you are (in some sense) correct. Better would be to work out a solution/compromise that works even in the presence of those feelings. (And in extreme situations, it can theoretically be best to, for instance, cut off all contact with a manipulative person. But even in that case, I don’t really see how denying the manipulative person’s feelings could be helpful.)
All that said, when it comes to manipulative people, I can understand the impulse to deny their feelings. It’s cathartic in a really unhelpful vindictive kind of way. But still, it’s unhelpful.
But I think I’ve gone way off on a tangent here. You’re not asking about manipulative people so far as I can tell. The example you gave was just transphobic conspiracy-theory-level bullshit that you’re trying to pass off as somehow lOgIcAl.
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Assume that Rob is not insane and can read a person.
all-knight-party@kbin.run 9 months ago
I read all sorts of things from people all the time and can often overthink the results or have missed something else I could've read that would've created more context, but I wasn't there to see, or perhaps, with time, I read and then forgot.
Basically, I think you'd then need to go down another rabbit hole of figuring out how good Rob actually is at reading people before his testimony is really worth all that much, because while Bob could lie about his feelings, Rob could lie about how he's interpreting Bob, dismantling the efficacy of his callout, and even if Rob were honest it wouldn't really prove anything. Just that Rob doesn't think Bob is being honest, so you'd just be arguing eternally until Bob somehow lets slip his mask, under the assumption he is actually lying, at which point you prove Bob is a liar who likes attention.
But in the majority times that you'd be wrong, or you wouldn't get the mask to slip, you'd just prove yourself an asshole, and would progressively lose friends/popular trust and credibility until arguing anyone's true feelings wouldn't be a truly valid option any longer, since no one would want to believe you, even if you were right due to being more often incorrect.
Basically, if you wanted to spend your time/have some sort of hobby or job where you attempted to force people to be honest about things they might lie about for emotional, popular, or financial reward, you'd have to go about it in a non confrontational investigative way, because you'd otherwise destroy your own opinion's worth or career long before it would get the public to change beliefs.
So you could argue claims of suffering, but there'd only be two reasons to do so, to be a dick, or to prove they were lying for their own gain, and the first isn't worth discussing, while the second is better served through less direct means.