Elementor #772 – DishonorableSpeechInPolitics

Blog posts:

Feb. 28, 2023:

Machine learning ratings of politicians’ tweets for dishonorable speech

On Feb. 1, the official Twitter account for this website, @DishonorP, started tweeting out machine learning-obtained dishonorable speech ratings of some politicians’ tweets. The plan is to continue tweeting out new ratings every Wednesday.

The machine learning models for rating politicians’ tweets on misrepresenting reality/misleading, promoting entitlement/victimhood, and negativity are still being refined, but here are a few details on them:

The ConvBERT transformer from HuggingFace was used in Python to build separate machine learning models for each dishonorable speech rating
The data used to train the models was from manual ratings of 16 different U.S. Senate candidates’ tweets from March 15-May 15, 2022, plus tweets from @SpeakerPelosi and @SpeakerMcCarthy (formerly @GOPLeader) from May 10-Oct. 10, 2021. A significantly smaller number of tweets in the dataset came from a number of other congress people’s accounts searched specifically for words related to entitlement and blame

Oct. 10, 2022:

5 udemy.com courses on raising your self-esteem ranked

I’m going to share with you my rankings of 5 courses offered through udemy.com on raising one’s self-esteem. I purchased all 5 courses on sale, at prices ranging from $11.99 to $15.99, although current full prices range from $34.99 to $99.99.
Here are my rankings, in order of which I liked best to which I liked least:

“Create Healthy Self-Esteem from within Yourself” by T.J. Guttormsen
“Intro – 6 Keys to Ultimate Confidence, Body, and Self-Esteem” by Dr. Elisaveta Pavlova
“Self-Esteem Masterclass: Learn to Love Yourself” by Leon Chaudhari
“Increase Core Confidence and Self-Esteem in Record Time” Jimmy Naraine
“Reclaiming Your Positive Self-Esteem” Terry L. Ledford

I wouldn’t say any of these courses aren’t worth buying, especially when on sale – I think there are things people are going to find helpful in each of them. My favorite of the five, though, was “Create Healthy Self-Esteem from within Yourself” by T.J. Guttormsen. What I really liked about Guttormsen’s course was that he talked about taking responsibility and following your own morals as ways to raise your self-esteem, which I agree with, and I’ll go into more in a moment.

First, maybe we should define “self-esteem.” merriam-webster.com defines it as a confidence and satisfaction in oneself: self-respect. This seems generally in line with what I think of when I think of high “self-esteem,” which is consistently feeling good about oneself. To me, “satisfaction in oneself” and “self-respect,” from merriam webster’s definition, imply feeling good about oneself. Since I believe we’re all ultimately in control of our own emotions, we could just choose to feel good about and love and respect ourselves in any moment. Boom, instant high self-esteem! But I think it’s a little more difficult than it sounds because most of us aren’t very good at consistently choosing to love and feel good about ourselves in every moment. And I think self-esteem, or satisfaction in oneself, is actually more involved than that, because, yes, I can choose to feel good about myself in any moment, but if I did a bad thing in the world, my conscience is still there in the background saying, “Hey, buddy, actually, you can’t feel 100% good about yourself because I’m here to remind you you have some unresolved business to attend to. Take responsibility, and try to heal the damage of your actions, though, and we can be good again.”

So, I believe, if we’re choosing in each moment to feel good about and love ourselves, which involves taking responsibility for our emotions, and we have a clear conscience from taking responsibility for our effects in the world (and within ourselves), then we can have what I’d call high “true” self-esteem.

Regarding responsibility, some of the courses I evaluated talked about techniques that, in my view, effectively help you control your emotional state, but they didn’t loop back and mention how these were basically ways of taking responsibility for your emotions. Some such techniques include reframing, being curious rather than judgmental, and feeling good about yourself through self-affirmations. So I feel like those courses would be helpful, but they likely won’t get you all the way there because of the lack of emphasis on personal responsibility as key to truly raising your self-esteem.

I hope this ranking of self-esteem-building courses was useful to you – thank you for reading.

Oct. 3, 2022:

Other attempts out there to rate politicians’ tweets for negativity

In writing up the results of my analyses on U.S. senate candidates’ tweets for dishonorable speech, I came across an interesting article in which machine learning was used to rate some U.S. senators’ tweets for negativity over an approximately two-month period before the 2018 elections. In the article, they said 4 humans looked for 4 factors in tweets: negative tone, personal attacks, policy attacks and incivility. The authors then used this data to train their machine learning model to identify the same things. They also mention a few other studies in which humans manually identified negativity in tweets. A significant advantage of a well-trained machine learning system is that it should allow tweets by politicians to be rated very quickly without a large expenditure of resources. Alessandro Nai, one of the authors of the study, published some of their results to what he called “The Negative Campaigning Comparative Expert Survey” on his website, although there’s no data for 2022.

I believe if lwv.org and ballotpedia.org started posting these sorts of machine learning-obtained negativity ratings for tweets on their websites as part of candidate profiles, this could provide valuable information to citizens who could vote for candidates with lower tweet negativity scores and thus support a reduction in negativity in political discourse.

Sep. 29, 2022:

Alaska’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets rated for negativity, other measures

This is a copy of a press release:

Website Releases U.S. Senate Candidate for Alaska Tweet Ratings

DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com releases dishonorable speech ratings of Alaska’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Lisa Murkowski’s and Kelly Tshibaka’s tweets

Halfmoon, NY, Sept. 29, 2022 – DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com has released dishonorable speech ratings of tweets over a two-month period for Alaska’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Republican Lisa Murkowski and Republican Kelly Tshibaka. The three ratings include those for misrepresenting reality and misleading, promoting personal irresponsibility, and negativity.

The Google Chrome extension Twlets was used to capture tweets from March 15 to May 15, 2022, which was well before primary elections were held on August 16. The analyses to obtain the ratings were performed by identifying which of 37 categories of dishonorable speech were thought to be present in each tweet, and counting up the “years” of dishonorable speech “sentence” from each one. In analogy with the criminal justice system in which sentences are handed out as a number of years or a lifetime in prison for various offenses, this rating system hands out suggested “sentences” in “years” or “lifetimes” (taken as 60 “years”) for dishonorable speech. More years are added to the ratings for speech offenses deemed more severe or damaging, and fewer years for speech considered less damaging. For instance, calling someone names results in a significantly higher number of years of sentence than offering opinion as fact. The lower the number of years or lifetimes of a rating, the more honorable the speech.

The ratings and how they’re obtained are described in more detail at DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com, and even more detail in Sean M. Sweeney’s new book “Honorable Speech: What Is It, Why Should We Care, and Is It Anywhere to Be Found in U.S. Politics?,” available at amazon.com.

Results of the analyses are listed in the table below.

Dishonorable speech ratings of Alaska’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts over the period from March 15 to May 15, 2022. Incumbent is listed in bold.

^#R = Republican, D = Democrat

^When candidates had more than one Twitter account, the one with the most followers was used for this analysis.

*Includes retweets, not replies.

Tshibaka’s Twitter negativity rating was about 14 times higher than Murkowski’s.

The table below lists the dishonorable speech categories that were main contributors to the negativity ratings of Murkowski’s and Tshibaka’s tweets.

Murkowski’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

Tshibaka’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

The biggest contributors to the promoting personal irresponsibility ratings were promoting entitlement and victimhood for Murkowski, and blaming for Tshibaka.

The misrepresenting reality and misleading rating likely doesn’t correspond to what some may intuitively think it might, i.e., simple fact checking of what someone says (although that would be a part of it.) For instance, offering opinion as fact, misrepresenting reality through logical fallacies, calling someone names (which effectively offers opinion as fact), and blaming others (misleading by denying one’s own share of responsibility) all contribute to this rating. The misrepresenting reality and misleading rating could perhaps be thought of as a measure of how much a politician is trying to sell their side of a story rather than holistically presenting how reality is to the best of their understanding of it.

If these sorts of ratings of politicians’ communications became widespread, they could help voters make more informed decisions at the polls to support candidates who share their values.

References used in the analyses:

https://www.newsweek.com/tshibaka-says-make-mailing-abortion-pills-federal-crime-resurfaced-video-1696673

About Dishonorable Speech Consulting, LLC

Founded by PhD engineer Sean M. Sweeney, Dishonorable Speech Consulting, LLC launched its DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com website in Oct., 2020. The site is dedicated to increasing honorable speech in politics and the world in general. In Sept., 2022, Sean released his book “Honorable Speech: What Is It, Why Should We Care, and Is It Anywhere to Be Found in U.S. Politics?” on amazon.com. Twitter: @DishonorP

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Sep. 29, 2022:

Arizona’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets rated for negativity, other measures

This is a copy of a press release:

Website Releases U.S. Senate Candidate for Arizona Tweet Ratings

DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com releases dishonorable speech ratings of Arizona’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Mark Kelly’s and Blake Masters’ tweets

Halfmoon, NY, Sept. 29, 2022 – DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com has released dishonorable speech ratings of tweets over a two-month period for Arizona’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Democrat Mark Kelly and Republican Blake Masters. The three ratings include those for misrepresenting reality and misleading, promoting personal irresponsibility, and negativity.

The Google Chrome extension Twlets was used to capture tweets from March 15 to May 15, 2022, which was well before primary elections were held on August 2. This means that Blake Masters, in particular, had not yet been selected as the Republican nominee. The analyses to obtain the ratings were performed by identifying which of 37 categories of dishonorable speech were thought to be present in each tweet, and counting up the “years” of dishonorable speech “sentence” from each one. In analogy with the criminal justice system in which sentences are handed out as a number of years or a lifetime in prison for various offenses, this rating system hands out suggested “sentences” in “years” or “lifetimes” (taken as 60 “years”) for dishonorable speech. More years are added to the ratings for speech offenses deemed more severe or damaging, and fewer years for speech considered less damaging. For instance, calling someone names results in a significantly higher number of years of sentence than offering opinion as fact. The lower the number of years or lifetimes of a rating, the more honorable the speech.

Results of the analyses are listed in the table below.

Dishonorable speech ratings of Arizona’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts over the period from March 15 to May 15, 2022. Incumbent is listed in bold.

^#R = Republican, D = Democrat

^When candidates had more than one Twitter account, the one with the most followers was used for this analysis.

*Includes retweets, not replies.

Masters’ Twitter negativity rating was about 26 times that of Kelly.

The table below lists the dishonorable speech categories that were main contributors to the negativity ratings of Kelly’s and Masters’ tweets.

Kelly’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

Masters’ tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

In addition, Masters’ tweets were assessed as containing negativity towards AOC, Netflix, Taylor Lorenz, Jeff Bezos, the FBI, Mitt Romney, congress, Mark Zuckerberg, the CIA, justices in a particular court case, China, Cory Booker and Stephen King on one occasion each.

The biggest contributors to the promoting personal irresponsibility ratings were promoting entitlement and victimhood for Kelly, and blaming for Masters.

If these sorts of ratings of politicians’ communications became widespread, they could help voters make more informed decisions at the polls to support candidates who share their values.

References used in the analyses:

https://ktar.com/story/5013498/jim-lamon-dominates-gop-field-financially-in-arizona-race-for-us-senate/

About Dishonorable Speech Consulting, LLC

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Sep. 29, 2022:

Georgia’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets rated for negativity, other measures

This is a copy of a press release:

Website Releases U.S. Senate Candidate for Georgia Tweet Ratings

DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com releases dishonorable speech ratings of Georgia’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Raphael Warnock’s and Herschel Walker’s tweets

Halfmoon, NY, Sept. 29, 2022 – DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com has released dishonorable speech ratings of tweets over a two-month period for Georgia’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. The three ratings include those for misrepresenting reality and misleading, promoting personal irresponsibility, and negativity.

The Google Chrome extension Twlets was used to capture tweets from March 15 to May 15, 2022, which was before primary elections were held on May 24. The analyses to obtain the ratings were performed by identifying which of 37 categories of dishonorable speech were thought to be present in each tweet, and counting up the “years” of dishonorable speech “sentence” from each one. In analogy with the criminal justice system in which sentences are handed out as a number of years or a lifetime in prison for various offenses, this rating system hands out suggested “sentences” in “years” or “lifetimes” (taken as 60 “years”) for dishonorable speech. More years are added to the ratings for speech offenses deemed more severe or damaging, and fewer years for speech considered less damaging. For instance, calling someone names results in a significantly higher number of years of sentence than offering opinion as fact. The lower the number of years or lifetimes of a rating, the more honorable the speech.

Results of the analyses are listed in the table below.

Dishonorable speech ratings of Georgia’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts over the period from March 15 to May 15, 2022. Incumbent is listed in bold.

^#R = Republican, D = Democrat

^When candidates had more than one Twitter account, the one with the most followers was used for this analysis.

*Includes retweets, not replies.

Walker’s Twitter negativity rating was twice that of Warnock.

The table below lists the dishonorable speech categories that were main contributors to the negativity ratings of Warnock’s and Walker’s tweets.

Warnock’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

Walker’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

The biggest contributors to the promoting personal irresponsibility ratings were promoting entitlement and victimhood for both Warnock and Walker, while blaming also contributed a little less than half to this rating for Walker’s tweets. Warnock promoted entitlement especially regarding capping insulin costs. This promoting of entitlement also contributed to his misrepresenting reality and misleading rating.

If these sorts of ratings of politicians’ communications became widespread, they could help voters make more informed decisions at the polls to support candidates who share their values.

References used in the analyses:

https://www.axios.com/2022/04/12/senate-secretary-blows-off-expense-disclosure-reports?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiossneakpeek&stream=top

About Dishonorable Speech Consulting, LLC

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Sep. 29, 2022:

Nevada’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets rated for negativity, other measures

This is a copy of a press release:

Website Releases U.S. Senate Candidate for Nevada Tweet Ratings

DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com releases dishonorable speech ratings of Nevada’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Catherine Cortez Masto’s and Adam Laxalt’s tweets

Halfmoon, NY, Sept. 29, 2022 – DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com has released dishonorable speech ratings of tweets over a two-month period for Nevada’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Adam Laxalt. The three ratings include those for misrepresenting reality and misleading, promoting personal irresponsibility, and negativity.

The Google Chrome extension Twlets was used to capture tweets from March 15 to May 15, 2022, which was before primary elections were held on June 14. This means that Adam Laxalt, in particular, had not yet been selected as the Republican nominee. The analyses to obtain the ratings were performed by identifying which of 37 categories of dishonorable speech were thought to be present in each tweet, and counting up the “years” of dishonorable speech “sentence” from each one. In analogy with the criminal justice system in which sentences are handed out as a number of years or a lifetime in prison for various offenses, this rating system hands out suggested “sentences” in “years” or “lifetimes” (taken as 60 “years”) for dishonorable speech. More years are added to the ratings for speech offenses deemed more severe or damaging, and fewer years for speech considered less damaging. For instance, calling someone names results in a significantly higher number of years of sentence than offering opinion as fact. The lower the number of years or lifetimes of a rating, the more honorable the speech.

Results of the analyses are listed in the table below.

Dishonorable speech ratings of Nevada’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts over the period from March 15 to May 15, 2022. Incumbent is listed in bold.

^#R = Republican, D = Democrat

^When candidates had more than one Twitter account, the one with the most followers was used for this analysis.

*Includes retweets, not replies.

Cortez Masto’s Twitter negativity rating was more than 10 times less than Laxalt’s.

The table below lists the dishonorable speech categories that were main contributors to the negativity ratings of Cortez Masto’s and Laxalt’s tweets.

Cortez Masto’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

Laxalt’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

The biggest contributors to the promoting personal irresponsibility ratings were promoting entitlement and victimhood for Cortez Masto, and about half promoting entitlement and victimhood and half blaming for Laxalt.

If these sorts of ratings of politicians’ communications became widespread, they could help voters make more informed decisions at the polls to support candidates who share their values.

References used in the analyses:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3272292-senate-landscape-comes-into-focus-as-outside-groups-lock-in-ad-time/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKDfFp5hb80

About Dishonorable Speech Consulting, LLC

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Sep. 29, 2022:

Pennsylvania’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets rated for negativity, other measures

This is a copy of a press release:

Website Releases U.S. Senate Candidate for Pennsylvania Tweet Ratings

DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com releases dishonorable speech ratings of Pennsylvania’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates John Fetterman’s and Mehmet Oz’s tweets

Halfmoon, NY, Sept. 29, 2022 – DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com has released dishonorable speech ratings of tweets over a two-month period for Pennsylvania’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz. The three ratings include those for misrepresenting reality and misleading, promoting personal irresponsibility, and negativity.

The Google Chrome extension Twlets was used to capture tweets from March 15 to May 15, 2022, which was before primary elections were held on May 17. This means that Mehmet Oz, in particular, had not yet been selected as the Republican nominee. The analyses to obtain the ratings were performed by identifying which of 37 categories of dishonorable speech were thought to be present in each tweet, and counting up the “years” of dishonorable speech “sentence” from each one. In analogy with the criminal justice system in which sentences are handed out as a number of years or a lifetime in prison for various offenses, this rating system hands out suggested “sentences” in “years” or “lifetimes” (taken as 60 “years”) for dishonorable speech. More years are added to the ratings for speech offenses deemed more severe or damaging, and fewer years for speech considered less damaging. For instance, calling someone names results in a significantly higher number of years of sentence than offering opinion as fact. The lower the number of years or lifetimes of a rating, the more honorable the speech.

Results of the analyses are listed in the table below.

Dishonorable speech ratings of Pennsylvania’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts over the period from March 15 to May 15, 2022.

^#R = Republican, D = Democrat

^When candidates had more than one Twitter account, the one with the most followers was used for this analysis.

*Includes retweets, not replies.

Oz’s Twitter negativity rating was nearly four times as high as Fetterman’s.

The table below lists the dishonorable speech categories that were main contributors to the negativity ratings of Fetterman’s and Oz’s tweets.

Fetterman’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

Oz’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

The biggest contributors to the promoting personal irresponsibility ratings were promoting entitlement and victimhood for both Fetterman and Oz, with about 30 percent of the rating coming from blaming for Oz’s tweets.

If these sorts of ratings of politicians’ communications became widespread, they could help voters make more informed decisions at the polls to support candidates who share their values.

References used in the analyses:

https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-state; https://stacker.com/stories/1667/states-most-and-least-student-debt

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/energy-independence-fact-check/index.html

About Dishonorable Speech Consulting, LLC

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Sep. 29, 2022:

Wisconsin’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets rated for negativity, other measures

This is a copy of a press release:

Website Releases U.S. Senate Candidate for Wisconsin Tweet Ratings

DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com releases dishonorable speech ratings of Wisconsin’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Ron Johnson’s and Mandela Barnes’ tweets

Halfmoon, NY, Sept. 29, 2022 – DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com has released dishonorable speech ratings of tweets over a two-month period for Wisconsin’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Mandela Barnes. The three ratings include those for misrepresenting reality and misleading, promoting personal irresponsibility, and negativity.

The Google Chrome extension Twlets was used to capture tweets from March 15 to May 15, 2022, which was well before primary elections were held on August 9. This means that Mandela Barnes, in particular, had not yet been selected as the Democratic nominee. The analyses to obtain the ratings were performed by identifying which of 37 categories of dishonorable speech were thought to be present in each tweet, and counting up the “years” of dishonorable speech “sentence” from each one. In analogy with the criminal justice system in which sentences are handed out as a number of years or a lifetime in prison for various offenses, this rating system hands out suggested “sentences” in “years” or “lifetimes” (taken as 60 “years”) for dishonorable speech. More years are added to the ratings for speech offenses deemed more severe or damaging, and fewer years for speech considered less damaging. For instance, calling someone names results in a significantly higher number of years of sentence than offering opinion as fact. The lower the number of years or lifetimes of a rating, the more honorable the speech.

Results of the analyses are listed in the table below.

Dishonorable speech ratings of Wisconsin’s 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts over the period from March 15 to May 15, 2022. Incumbent is listed in bold.

^#R = Republican, D = Democrat

^When candidates had more than one Twitter account, the one with the most followers was used for this analysis.

*Includes retweets, not replies.

Johnson’s Twitter negativity rating was about double that of Barnes.

The table below lists the dishonorable speech categories that were main contributors to the negativity ratings of Johnson’s and Barnes’ tweets.

Johnson’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

In addition, Johnson’s tweets were assessed as containing negativity towards Chuck Schumer, the Washington Post, the CDC, Twitter, Medicaid administrators, Politifact, some school districts, the FDA and NIH, and the Secret Service on one occasion each.

Barnes’ tweets were assessed as containing negativity aimed at the following, on these number of occasions:

In addition, Barnes’ tweets were assessed as containing negativity towards “Big Tech,” lawmakers who’ve “sold out American manufacturing,” former governor Scott Walker, senators who trade stocks while in office, and Amazon on one occasion each.

The biggest contributors to the promoting personal irresponsibility ratings were blaming and then promoting entitlement and victimhood for Johnson, and promoting entitlement and victimhood for Barnes.

If these sorts of ratings of politicians’ communications became widespread, they could help voters make more informed decisions at the polls to support candidates who share their values.

References used in the analyses:

https://upnorthnewswi.com/2022/04/05/aoc-gets-the-usps-to-admit-oshkosh-defense-had-no-plans-to-create-its-new-jobs-in-wisconsin/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/unraveling-tale-hunter-biden-35-million-russia/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gates-seems-to-double-down-on-claim-that-bidens-been-wrong-on-top-foreign-policy-issues-for-decades

https://www.yahoo.com/video/u-senator-says-may-true-233002349.html

https://nypost.com/2022/05/09/white-house-condemns-attack-on-anti-abortion-group-office/

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/kavanaugh-assassination-attempt-schumer-blame-abortion-guns-whirlwind-supreme-court.html

About Dishonorable Speech Consulting, LLC

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Sep. 28, 2022:

Updated: 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets rated for negativity, other measures

This is a copy of an upcoming press release:

DishonorableSpeechInPolitics.com has released dishonorable speech ratings of tweets over a two-month period from twelve 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts. The Republican and Democrat candidates come from six states: Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The candidates’ tweets were rated on three areas: 1) misrepresenting reality and misleading, 2) promoting personal irresponsibility, and 3) negativity.

The Google Chrome extension Twlets was used to capture tweets from March 15 to May 15, 2022, which was before primary elections were held in any of the six states. The analyses to obtain the ratings were performed by identifying which of 37 categories of dishonorable speech were thought to be present in each tweet, and counting up the “years” of dishonorable speech “sentence” from each one. In analogy with the criminal justice system in which sentences are handed out as a number of years or a lifetime in prison for various offenses, this rating system hands out suggested “sentences” in “years” or “lifetimes” (taken as 60 “years”) for dishonorable speech. More years are added to the ratings for speech offenses deemed more severe or damaging, and fewer years for speech considered less damaging. For instance, calling someone names results in a significantly higher number of years of sentence than offering opinion as fact. The lower the number of years or lifetimes of a rating, the more honorable the speech.

Results of the analyses are listed in the table below. Of the candidates examined, Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski’s tweets had the best rating for negativity over the two-month time period, while Pennsylvania Republican Mehmet Oz’s tweets had the worst.

Dishonorable speech ratings of six states’ 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts over the period from March 15 to May 15, 2022, sorted from least to most negative. Incumbents are listed in bold.

^#R = Republican, D = Democrat

^When candidates had more than one Twitter account, the one with the most followers was used for this analysis.

*Includes retweets, not replies.

Main contributors to the negativity ratings tended to be tweets assessed as implying dishonesty or stealing, implying incompetence, apparently assuming bad intent or beliefs, using vague negative terms such as “radical left,” and containing blame. Some of the common topics Democrats’ tweets were negative on were Republicans and corporations (“Big Oil,” “Big Pharma,” etc.). Some of the common topics Republicans’ tweets were negative on included President Biden or his administration, the media, Democrats, and the “Left.”

The biggest contributors to the promoting personal irresponsibility rating tended to be blaming and promoting entitlement and victimhood, with Democrats tending to do more of the latter than Republicans.

Offering opinion as fact and misrepresenting reality through logical fallacies both tended to contribute significantly to the misrepresenting reality and misleading rating. This rating likely doesn’t correspond to what some may intuitively think it might, i.e., simple fact checking of what someone says (although that would be a part of it.) For instance, calling someone names (which effectively offers opinion as fact), and blaming others (misleading by denying one’s own share of responsibility) both contribute to this rating. The misrepresenting reality and misleading rating could perhaps be thought of as a measure of how much a politician is trying to sell their side of a story rather than holistically presenting how reality is to the best of their understanding of it.

If these sorts of ratings of politicians’ communications became widespread, they could help voters make more informed decisions at the polls to support candidates who share their values.

References used in these analyses of U.S. senate candidates’ tweets:

For Mandela Barnes:

https://upnorthnewswi.com/2022/04/05/aoc-gets-the-usps-to-admit-oshkosh-defense-had-no-plans-to-create-its-new-jobs-in-wisconsin/

For Mark Brnovich:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/04/25/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-april-25-2022/

For John Fetterman:

https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-state; https://stacker.com/stories/1667/states-most-and-least-student-debt

For Sarah Godlewski:

https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/2014/4/johnson-comments-on-paycheck-fairness-vote

For Ron Johnson:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/unraveling-tale-hunter-biden-35-million-russia/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gates-seems-to-double-down-on-claim-that-bidens-been-wrong-on-top-foreign-policy-issues-for-decades

https://www.yahoo.com/video/u-senator-says-may-true-233002349.html

https://nypost.com/2022/05/09/white-house-condemns-attack-on-anti-abortion-group-office/

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/kavanaugh-assassination-attempt-schumer-blame-abortion-guns-whirlwind-supreme-court.html

For Alex Lasry:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/mar/18/alex-lasry/ron-johnson-has-not-endorsed-plan-phase-out-social/

For Adam Laxalt:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3272292-senate-landscape-comes-into-focus-as-outside-groups-lock-in-ad-time/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKDfFp5hb80

For Blake Masters:

https://ktar.com/story/5013498/jim-lamon-dominates-gop-field-financially-in-arizona-race-for-us-senate/

For Lisa Murkowski:

https://www.newsweek.com/tshibaka-says-make-mailing-abortion-pills-federal-crime-resurfaced-video-1696673

For Mehmet Oz:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/energy-independence-fact-check/index.html

For Herschel Walker:

https://www.axios.com/2022/04/12/senate-secretary-blows-off-expense-disclosure-reports?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiossneakpeek&stream=top

Sep. 27, 2022:

Top 10 reasons to buy my book (in my opinion)

10. Because you’re genuinely interested in the answers to the questions in the title of the book: “Honorable Speech: What Is It, Why Should We Care, and Is It Anywhere to Be Found in U.S. Politics?”

9. To read some of the content that’s not on my website such as about the excuses people make for speaking dishonorably, the benefits of changing the attitudes behind dishonorable speech such as a win-at-all-costs mentality, and 10 things you can do to proactively make your speech more honorable, not just less dishonorable.

8. To use as a resource for teaching students about speaking honorably and recognizing dishonorable speech in politics.

7. Because you want to learn how to make your own speech more honorable.

6. To take the 30-Day Challenge to speaking more honorably in written form with embedded links rather than through my YouTube videos.

5. To help support a system in which people with good intent trying to do good in the world can make money off of it, thus incentivizing more good action by them and others.

4. To help this work get noticed – Amazon publishes the sales ranks of books and a better ranking is going to make the book seem more legitimate and intriguing to others. (Oh, and while you’re at it, following my Facebook page and Twitter and YouTube accounts couldn’t hurt either.)

3. Because you’re interested in knowing the details of my dishonorable speech rating system that you can’t find on my website.

2. To gift to a politician with a note saying you’d like to see them speaking more honorably, such as is described in the book (see my blog post on how to do this for an ebook).

1. Because you’re disillusioned with the current political culture and want to better understand how a quantitative dishonorable speech rating system might help change that.

Sep. 16, 2022:

3 new dishonorable speech ratings, updated

On April 4, 2022, I introduced three new dishonorable speech ratings, including for: 1) avoiding misrepresenting reality and misleading, 2) avoiding promoting personal irresponsibility, and 3) avoiding negativity. More recently, as part of writing my “Honorable Speech: What Is It, Why Should We Care, and Is It Anywhere to Be Found in U.S. Politics?” book, I revamped these ratings somewhat, dropping the word “avoiding” to start each rating title, so they’re now called: 1) misrepresenting reality and misleading, 2) promoting personal irresponsibility, and 3) negativity.

I also changed how the ratings were calculated. Instead of putting all of a given dishonorable speech category as part of one of the ratings, I split the “sentence” values in “years” of each category so that, for instance, category #1 name calling may have 1 year that goes towards misrepresenting reality and misleading (since it’s effectively offering opinion as fact, in my opinion), while the rest of the years for this category go under the negativity rating. I believe doing this results in the 3 new ratings more accurately representing their respective fractions of the overall dishonorable speech. For details on how the years for each dishonorable speech category are split into these updated ratings, see my book. Also note that lower numbers of “years” for these ratings indicates that the speech is more honorable, i.e., a lower rating is better.

It’s worth mentioning, I believe, that the misrepresenting reality and misleading rating doesn’t correspond to what some may intuitively think it would, i.e., simple fact checking of what someone says – although that is part of it. For instance, offering opinion as fact, misrepresenting reality through logical fallacies, calling someone names (which effectively offers opinion as fact), and blaming others (misleading by denying one’s own share of responsibility) all contribute to this rating. This rating could perhaps be thought of as a measure of how much a politician is trying to sell their side of a story rather than holistically presenting how reality is to the best of their understanding of it.

Sep. 5, 2022:

What you get from my “Honorable Speech” book that you don’t from this website

My quantitative dishonorable speech ratings system laid out in detail
Dishonorable quotes from a range of U.S. presidential candidates for you to guess who said them
Some new sections that are neither on my blog nor my YouTube channel such as about the excuses people make for speaking dishonorably, the benefits of changing some of the attitudes behind dishonorable speech such as a win-at-all-costs mentality, and 10 additional things you can do to make your speech more honorable
Humor to break up the heaviness of the subject
“Training materials” for doing dishonorable speech analyses
My 30-day challenge to speak more honorably, in written form (it’s also on my YouTube channel, in video form)
More polished versions of some of my blog posts
Some edited scripts from my YouTube videos that aren’t on my blog, such as about being respectful and about dishonor in children’s stories
The joy of supporting someone trying to do good in the world by paying for a product they’ve put out

Sep. 5, 2022:

Gifting my “Honorable Speech” book to politicians

I’ve recently completed a book: “Honorable Speech: What Is It, Why Should We Care, and Is It Anywhere to Be Found in U.S. Politics.” In it, one of the ways I mention to try to help encourage U.S. politicians to campaign less negatively and speak more honorably is to gift them a copy of my eBook. If we had enough people do this, I believe it would send a strong message. On amazon.com, if you send someone a link to an eBook, and it isn’t redeemed within 60 days, you’re not charged. My thought is that most politicians probably aren’t going to redeem more than one or perhaps a few copies of the book for their staff. So if we had a ton of people sending them links, most of those people likely wouldn’t actually end up paying for the book, but the message would still get conveyed that they cared enough to be willing to pay to get their point across.

I’ll now walk you through the steps to order eBooks for politicians of your choice:

You can find my eBook listed at this link on amazon.com,
Find the “Buy for others” box off to the right (it’s below the “Buy now” box), and hit “Buy for others,”
Under “Choose your delivery method,” select “We’ll give you redemption links to send to your recipients”
Select the quantity of links that you want,
Hit “Place your order” and you’ll receive an email with a “Manage eBook” button that you can click on that will take you to your links
Click on “Copy link with instructions,” and it will copy the eBook link plus instructions on how to redeem it onto your clipboard which you can then paste into an email or as a message on a politicians’ website contact page,
Send a link to a given politician by going to their website and sending them the link plus redemption instructions through their contact form, with a message of your choice.

Here’s a suggested message:

Dear (insert politician’s name),

Please accept this gift of Sean M. Sweeney’s eBook “Honorable Speech: What Is It, Why Should We Care, and Is It Anywhere to Be Found in U.S. Politics.” See instructions for redeeming it below.

I’m a concerned citizen and would like to see more honorable speech by our politicians, such as less negative campaigning. I hope this book is useful to you to better your understanding of what it means to speak honorably, and that you may incorporate this into how you communicate. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

(your name)

P.S. For ethics rules purposes: I’m not a registered federal lobbyist, foreign agent, or entity that employs or retains a registered federal lobbyist or foreign agent, and this eBook is valued at $6.99.

(insert the redeemable link plus instructions here)

For an example of a politician’s contact page, here’s one for President Joe Biden:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

It does take a little of your time to go through this process, but I believe it’s a relatively simple thing that if enough people did for enough politicians, we may begin to change the nature of political discourse in the U.S.

Jul. 25, 2022:

2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets rated for negativity, other measures

Dishonorablespeechinpolitics.com has released honorable speech ratings of some 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ tweets over the period of March 15 to May 15, 2022. These include some of the leading candidates in the polls (according to racetothewh.com and projects.fivethirtyeight.com) for the upcoming primary elections in Arizona (August 2), Wisconsin (August 9) and Alaska (August 16). Three honorable speech ratings were determined for each candidate, including for: 1) avoiding misrepresenting reality/misleading, 2) avoiding promoting personal irresponsibility, and 3) avoiding negativity. The ratings scales range from 1 to 20, with 20 being the best, meaning no dishonorable speech was identified. As a general guide, ratings of 16 to 19 could be considered good, 10 to 15 fair, 5 to 9 poor, and 1 to 4 highly dishonorable. 37 categories of dishonorable speech were used to analyze the tweets, see dishonorablespeechinpolitics.com/Services/#Categories for more details on these. More details about the rating system can be found here.

In this case of analyzing tweets, the 1 to 20 scale for avoiding negativity was set by considering the number of days of tweets (62) divided by the “suggested dishonorability sentence” in years for negativity (see dishonorablespeechinpolitics.com/Services/#RatingSystem for more on “suggested dishonorability sentences”). The highest score of this type among these candidates was set equal to 19, and the lowest equal to 1, with a linear scale used in between. The 1 to 20 scales for avoiding misrepresenting reality/misleading and avoiding promoting personal irresponsibility were then set by doubling the slope of the scale for avoiding negativity. This was done since approximately a factor of two fewer categories of dishonorable speech are involved in these other two ratings than in the rating for avoiding negativity.

For candidates with multiple Twitter accounts, the account with the most followers was analyzed. Since the ratings are based on how much dishonorable speech there was per day, not how much there was per tweet, accounts with fewer tweets may tend to score better – fewer tweets per day means fewer words to possibly contain dishonorable speech per day. For Mark Brnovich, his @GeneralBrnovich account had more followers, but significantly fewer tweets than his @brnoforaz account during this two month time period (82 tweets for @GeneralBrnovich versus 206 tweets for @brnoforaz). For him, both of his accounts were analyzed.

Incumbents Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Kelly, a Democrat, had the most honorable speech in their tweets over the two month time period analyzed, according to the ratings. Incumbent Ron Johnson, a Republican, had one of the worst ratings of the candidates analyzed.

Ratings for avoiding misrepresenting reality/misleading were generally high, with some candidates offering opinion as fact and/or taking quotes from their opponents out of context. While Democrats tended to promote personal irresponsibility (such as by supporting entitlement to healthcare) more than Republicans, Ron Johnson, a Republican, received the lowest score in that category, mostly due to blaming Democrats for issues Republicans share some responsibility in. Over this relatively small group of candidates, there seemed to be either very little negativity (ratings of 18 or 19) or a lot of it (ratings of 4 or less), with not much in between.

Honorable speech ratings of some 2022 U.S. senate candidates’ Twitter accounts. Incumbents are listed in bold.

*Includes retweets, not replies. ^Percentage of rating due to blaming shown in parentheses.

For each candidate, the first 4 most common categories of dishonorable speech and how many times they were identified in that candidates’ tweets are listed in the second table below. The most commonly identified dishonorable speech categories under the avoiding negativity rating were #4-2 implying wrongdoing, #4-1 implying incompetence, #12-1 assuming bad intent or beliefs, and #8 using vague negative terms such as “extremist” and “radical.”

The Google Chrome extension Twlets was used to extract tweets to a spreadsheet for these analyses.

The 4 most commonly identified categories of dishonorable speech for each candidates’ tweets, and the number of times they were identified.

Quick guide to categories:

4-1 = implying incompetence

4-2 = implying stealing/dishonesty

7-2 = misquoting to imply someone’s a bad person

8 = using vague negative terms

11 = misrepresenting reality (as through logical fallacies)

12-1 = assuming bad intent or beliefs

13 = offering opinion as fact

14-1 = blaming for things you are partially responsible for

15 = promoting entitlement/victimhood

Polls examined:

Arizona polls: https://www.racetothewh.com/arizona,

Wisconsin polls: https://www.racetothewh.com/senate/wisconsin,

Alaska polls: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/alaska/.

Jul. 25, 2022:

eBook on honorable speech available for pre-order

My forthcoming ebook, “Honorable Speech: What Is It, Why Should We Care, and Is It Anywhere to Be Found in U.S. Politics?,” is now available for pre-order for $6.99 on amazon, for its Sept. 5, 2022 release. Here is the book description:

This book isn’t about political correctness or punishing people into talking a certain way.

Instead, it’s an attempt to inspire people, including our political leaders, to speak more honorably, or in a way that ultimately supports love and value building over hate and value destruction. And it provides a guide for how people may go about doing that.

A detailed dishonorable speech rating system is presented, including examples of its use to quantify the damages of speeches, tweets and campaign commercials by U.S. politicians, in particular, presidential and senate candidates. Some ideas are set forward on how each of us may help break the pattern of partisan-based dishonorable speech in the U.S.

May 12, 2022:

11 Udemy anger management courses ranked best to worst (in my opinion)

I’ve been reading books and taking courses on personal development for years. Today I’m going to share my rankings of 11 anger management courses I purchased on sale from udemy.com for prices ranging from $12.99 to $24.99. Based on my personal development experiences, here are some of the key things I was looking for in an anger management, or more preferably, anger elimination course:

You get angry from not getting what you want and/or a “rule violation”
“Rule violation” anger ultimately comes from a lack of self-love
We can eliminate, not just manage our anger by going through a defined process

An example of a rule you may have is: you should be considerate of others. When people don’t seem to be considerate, rule violation anger may result because the other person’s behavior shows you a part of yourself you hate, that is, the inconsiderate part. But the thing is, we all have that inconsiderate part in us, and keeping a rule about it doesn’t somehow “fix” it, it really just lets anger control you.

Some of the other things I looked for that these online courses covered included:

“Quick fix” anger management techniques such as breathing while counting, walking away to compose oneself, and emotional state changes
Lifestyle changes to make anger reactions less likely such as exercise and meditation
Anger journaling or writing down some things about your anger
Tips for communicating when angry
Becoming more aware of your anger and its accompanying signs
Anger comes from you, it’s not caused by what happens in the outside world
Underneath anger is fear
Expectations can lead to anger

Here then is my ranking of the courses, with some of what they covered or didn’t:

My top-ranked course is the one by Angela Hardy because it not only includes changing one’s rules to eliminate anger responses, it talks about self-love and gives a method called Emotional Freedom Technique tapping, or EFT tapping, to increase self-love. Her course is only $19.99 even when it’s not on sale, and, in my opinion, it’s definitely worth this price and more. My second favorite was the one by Scot Conway in which he uses some of Anthony Robbins’ techniques such as emotional state changes and changing one’s rules to eliminate anger. And my third favorite was the one by Ken Wells which includes what I found to be a useful perception management worksheet for reducing or eliminating specific anger responses. If you can buy two or even all three of these courses on sale, that’s not a bad idea, in my opinion, because sometimes it helps to hear things described by multiple people.

Note that production quality was not a consideration in my ranking, and some of the courses don’t have top notch sound quality. If that annoys you, perfect, write it down as an example of your anger to work on with the tools from the course.

I also evaluated one course that isn’t on udemy.com, it was on courseforanger.com. It says it satisfies court requirements, which I assume means a court ordering someone to take an anger management course for a certain number of hours. You pay different prices for the course based on how long you’re required to contemplate the material, from 4 to 16 hours. 4 hours costs $25, while 16 hours costs $85, but I believe the material in the course is the same. This was eye-opening to me because this was my least favorite course of the 12 I looked at, and it seems like it wouldn’t be particularly more useful after 16 hours with the course pages open versus 4. The course was all text, by the way, no videos, and personally I read through all the slides in a little over an hour.

In a future blog post, I’m planning on doing a ranking of Udemy courses on building self-esteem.

Apr. 15, 2022:

22 things you may say that destroy the most value in the world

In a previous blog post, I presented a ranking of some of the most value-destroying actions I think people can do, and, based on that, some of the most value-destroying words people can say. I then used that ranking to come up with a list of what I believe are 22 of the most value-destroying things everyday people say. These aren’t the most value-destroying things anyone says, since crime bosses may more directly destroy value with their words such as saying “shoot him,” and then someone does. I’m just considering everyday people here who may not realize the full extent of the value destruction they contribute to with their words. My goal isn’t to make you feel like a bad person if you say these things, it’s to try to make you aware of the potential damages of your words so you can decide for yourself if you want to continue to say them or not. Note that it can be difficult to assess relative levels of value destruction of different things people say because they depend to a significant degree on who the audience is, how much words may influence the audience and the speaker themselves, and the situation the words are used in. Therefore, my list is only very generally in order by expected level of value destruction. Also, there can be some variation in the exact words people use from the ones on this list – it’s more the theme of the dishonorable speech that’s important, I believe. Here, then, is my list of 22 of the most value-destroying things everyday people say:

“They’re pure evil,” “What a scumbag,” “He’s such a jerk,” “They’re a monster,”- How it destroys value: it hurts reputations, dehumanizes, implies people are beyond rehabilitation, and makes violence against and stealing from them more likely
“That’s inexcusable!” (also: unforgivable, unpardonable, indefensible, reprehensible, deplorable, insupportable, despicable, contemptible, disgraceful, and unjustifiable) – How it destroys value: it hurts reputations, dehumanizes people seen as abusers, and promotes victim mentality. It also generally hurts the speaker’s experience of life because it helps keep them in a state of anger rather than joy.
“How could you?,” “You’re bad for saying that!,” “Have you no heart?,” “Have you no sense of shame?” – How it destroys value: shaming or trying to make someone feel guilty hurts reputations and encourages a victim mentality by painting someone as an abuser
“They’re all a bunch of crooks” (about politicians), “You know the rich only care about getting richer” – How it destroys value: it hurts reputations and trust, misrepresents reality and relative levels of value, and discourages critical thinking and putting in effort
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” – How it destroys value: it goes against critical thinking and hurts reputations by assuming guilt rather than innocence
Gossip – How it destroys value: it hurts reputations, goes against one’s conscience
Lying/misleading (by everyday people) – How it destroys value: it’s a form of cheating, and goes against one’s conscience
“I’ll do that” (and then you don’t) = not keeping your word in non-life-threatening situations. How it destroys value: it’s a form of cheating and goes against one’s conscience
“They should be made to pay!” (through violence), “He needs to have his butt kicked,” “They got what they deserved” (that is, some violence against them) – How it destroys value: it promotes violence
“You should be outraged!,” “Doesn’t it bother you that?,” “I hate it when…,” – How it destroys value: it promotes anger and hate, making non-critical thinking and violence more likely
“They’re stealing our jobs!” – How it destroys value: it promotes hate against a group of people, making stealing from and violence against them more likely
“It’s so-and-so’s fault, not mine,” “It’s not my responsibility,” “Why doesn’t someone do something about this?,” “That’s not my job!,” “I’m mad at you!” (which basically says, “It’s your fault I’m mad”) – this is all blaming and not taking responsibility How it destroys value: it promotes stealing and violence. I see blame as a major tool of justification behind wars, murder, stealing, and other value destruction.
“Can you believe these rich, middle-aged white guys are in a space race while people are dying of starvation? It’s morally wrong!” – How it destroys value: it encourages hate, discourages critical thinking and honest effort, can be a denial of the speaker’s own responsibility in people starving, and promotes entitlement
“Their suffering is real!,” “You poor thing,” “My life is so miserable,” “You deserve a break,” – How it destroys value: it promotes a victim mentality, which lowers self-esteem, can be used to justify stealing, and generally encourages putting in less effort
“They need it the most, so they should have it,” “If it’s so good, why does it cost so much? Why isn’t it free?” – How it destroys value: it promotes entitlement, misrepresents reality and relative levels of value, and is used to justify stealing and putting in less effort
“They owe us” (when there’s no contract that says they do), “They (a business) should do something for the community” – How it destroys value: it supports entitlement, plus stealing by coercion
“It’s not fair!,” “The wealthy need to pay their fair share!,” – How it destroys value: it supports entitlement, and stealing by coercion
“You’re not good enough,” “You’re too stupid,” “Idiot!,” “You’re never going to amount to anything” – there’s no chance you’re gonna succeed, so you should stop trying – How it destroys value: it discourages effort, encourages victim mentality and a lower self-esteem, and it lowers the self-esteem of the person saying it because it supports putting others down as a temporary way to feel better about oneself
“I’m not good enough,” “I can’t because…” – How it destroys value: it supports low self-esteem, and excuses are used to justify putting in less effort to build value
“Nothing really matters,” “It doesn’t really matter if I do…,” – How it destroys value: it’s a denial of reality, of value, and of your responsibility and ability to affect things, if even in only apparently small ways, thus justifying putting in less effort
“This is how it’s always been done” – How it destroys value: it goes against critical thinking and risk taking
“That’s so bad for you” (with no explanation given as to why) – How it destroys value: it discourages critical thinking

And I’ll just add one more as a bonus, which could perhaps be considered as 18b:

18b. “People are so f-ing stupid!” – How it destroys value: it discourages critical thinking and empathy, and lowers the self-esteem of the person saying it because it supports looking down on others as a temporary way to feel better about oneself.

Since my website is called dishonorablespeechinpolitics.com, I’d like to point out some items on this list that seem to be commonly communicated to the public by politicians: #12 “It’s so-and-so’s fault” (generally the other political party’s), #14 “Their suffering is real!” (and we’re the ones coming to save them), #17 “It’s not fair!,” #1 “They’re pure evil,” #9 “They should be made to pay” (through violence), #10 “You should be outraged!,” #8 “I’ll do that” (and then they don’t), #7 lying/misleading, #11 “They’re stealing our jobs!,” and #2 “That’s inexcusable!”

That’s my list of 22 things everyday people say that I believe are some of the most value destroying. I hope by becoming more aware of them, you may be inspired to choose your words differently in the future so as to avoid unnecessary value destruction.

Apr. 13, 2022 (edited Apr. 17, 2022):

Ranking actions and words by how much value they destroy

This blog post is the result, in part, of me trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. Maybe you can relate. I care about things like there being less war and violence and stealing in the world, and people being happier and healthier. So I asked myself, what could I do with my remaining time on this Earth to try to have the biggest positive impact, which may, in fact, involve helping to avoid the most negative things? To answer this question, it seemed like it’d be useful to better understand what sorts of things destroy the most value in the world. So for this video, I tried to rank value-destroying actions and inactions by how much value they destroy. A most value-building actions list will have to wait for another time. Having a ranked list of value-destroying actions also helped me get to a ranked list of value-destroying speech, which I used to construct my list of 22 of the most destructive things everyday people say, to be presented in a future blog post.

But what do I mean by “value” when I say “value destroying?” I define value as usefulness to people in ultimately supporting and promoting life, supporting people’s individual rights to their own lives and the products of their efforts, and in gaining “positive” experiences, where “positive” can be objective, such as if it helps avoid death, or subjective, such as the positive experience you get from a keepsake that means something to you, but not someone else. So if you care about life, basic human rights, and positive experiences for yourself and others, you probably care about value being built rather than destroyed. And, conveniently, I define dishonorable speech basically as speech that helps motivate value destruction and/or directly destroys value. So if you’re a value lover like me, you probably want to avoid dishonorable speech as much as you can.

In making my list of most to least value-destroying actions, I considered people’s rights to their own lives as of the greatest value, then their rights to the products of their efforts, then human life in general, and, finally, generally of least value, positive experiences. I didn’t include the value of animal life, but if I had, I would’ve put it above positive experiences and below human life. I put people’s rights to their lives and property as of highest value in part because I believe these are foundational to value building. What I mean by that is, in certain situations, violating rights may seem to result in the most value in the short-term, such as seizing one person’s land to build a highway for many, but I believe in the long-term this violation generally results in a greater overall value loss. The way I see it, much more value is built when people can trust each other and work together than when they can’t. If I can’t trust that my rights will be respected in all but the most extreme cases, then I’m less likely to put in the effort and work with others to build value. Also, when we violate rights, there’s a value destruction in our own experience of life because we’ve gone against our conscience, assuming we have one. It may be easier to intuitively grasp how important rights are if you think about how it feels when yours are the ones being violated.

Coming back to my list of value-destroying actions, actions can be physical, including communicating words, as well as mental, including thinking and feeling. I’ll exclude communicating words from this first list and include it in its own list in a minute. Also, this ranked list of actions is only a general guideline, I don’t assert that it’s complete or that the order of the items is absolute. Finally, I got some ideas for my list by reading multiple blog posts by Michael Huemer at fakenous.net, as well as his “Knowledge, Reality, and Value” book, and by reading Peter Singer’s book “The Life You Can Save.” Both Huemer and Singer are philosophy professors, but with some significant differences of opinion, and I recommend reading both of their works because they make you think, or at least they did for me.

With that, my list of most to least value-destroying actions or inactions is:

Committing murder (a person intentionally killing another, without their permission, and not in self-defense)
Torturing someone
Being physically violent towards someone (not in self-defense), resulting in long-term health issues
Unjustly imprisoning or punishing someone (which also can involve damage to their reputation, and financial loss)
Coercing someone – forcing someone (in a non-defensive situation) to do something under threat of violence
Emotionally “abusing” a child such as contributing to them feeling like they’re not good enough to be loved
Polluting – negatively affecting people’s health, shortening lifespans
Being physically violent towards someone (not in self-defense), resulting in no long-term health issues
Damaging/destroying property (without the owner’s permission)
Stealing, which includes cheating, a form of stealing, such as in business or sports
Going against one’s conscience, including hating, resulting in a less positive experience of life, and making future value-destroying actions more likely if one suppresses their conscience rather than feels the full pain of it – note that this value destruction is on top of the external value destruction of the act itself, such as murdering someone
Not taking responsibility for one’s actions and emotions, thus lowering one’s self-esteem – this includes blaming (in one’s mind), lacking gratitude, and feeling entitled or like a victim
Acting without critically thinking about the ethical consequences, when one has time to think things through in advance
Not holding people accountable for their destructive actions, i.e., not upholding justice
Committing suicide
Not taking care of one’s health, both physical and mental (this includes doing risky things and not preparing for possible disasters)
Not helping when one could (i.e., without affecting one’s health or bringing about other significant value destruction) to save someone’s life or avoid them having long-term health issues
Not helping when one could to give others and oneself positive experiences, such as losing out on human connection by avoiding interacting with others
Not maximizing productivity (resulting in a loss in the expansion of options for positive experiences), including not pushing against one’s comfort to take on challenges or put in effort towards goals
Damaging/destroying one’s own property, or someone else’s, with their permission

In addition to these value-destroying actions, there can be value destruction in actively helping someone do them or get away with doing them. Also, some of the actions on this list can have a large range of possible value destructions. For instance, if someone’s murdered 10 seconds before they were going to die anyway, that could be considered to result in significantly less value destruction than if someone’s murdered who likely had 60 good years left to live. So again, the order of my list is just a general guideline, it’s not meant to be absolute.

To get from this list of most value-destroying actions or inactions to a list of most value-destroying things everyday people say, I needed to consider how communicating words could be the value-destroying action itself, or contribute to making value-destroying actions more likely. The value-destroying actions from my list that could be performed entirely or almost entirely by communicating words include #10 stealing/cheating and #11 going against one’s conscience – both of which could be accomplished by lying or misleading or not keeping one’s word, which can be a form of lie. Speaking in a way that hurts someone’s reputation, through lies or not, could be classified as an action that damages or destroys someone’s property, if we consider someone’s reputation as their property. It could also be classified as damaging to that person’s potential to build more value in the future. And it may very well result in more lasting damage than just stealing something from that person once. Words that make violence more likely, either by calling for it directly or by encouraging anger and hate, could be considered some of the most destroying of value. However, I rank these generally as less value destroying than words that directly destroy value. This is because words said by “everyday people” likely each contribute only very small amounts to the probabilities of destructive actions (as opposed to a crime boss telling his second in charge to kill someone, which likely raises the probability of violence dramatically). After words that promote violence may be words that encourage stealing, which can include words that promote entitlement, victim mentality, and blame. Also, I believe the way value is most consistently built in the world is through empathetic, creative, critical thinking – considering risks and rewards based on the best available data – plus putting in honest effort. So words that discourage empathy, creativity, curiosity, critical thinking and honest effort, or that spread false data (without the intent to lie) can also effectively destroy value by helping prevent it from being built.

Summing up what I’ve just said in a list of generally most to least value-destroying classes of speech for everyday people yields:

Words that hurt someone’s reputation
Lies that are part of cheating/stealing
Lies or not keeping one’s word – they go against one’s conscience
Words that contribute to making violence more likely, such as calling for violence or encouraging anger and hate, or de-humanizing people (including oneself)
Words that encourage stealing, including words promoting entitlement, blame, and victim mentality (which also lowers people’s self-esteem)
Words that spread false data, without intent to lie, such as some logical fallacies and rumors
Words that discourage empathy, creativity, curiosity, critical thinking and honest effort

Based on this list of value-destroying classes of speech, in a future blog post I’ll go over my list of what I believe are 22 of the most value-destroying things everyday people say.

And, in case you were interested, here’s my overall ranked list of value-destroying actions and inactions, including verbal and written communication, and including effects on animals:

Committing murder (a person intentionally killing another, without their permission, and not in self-defense)
Torturing someone
Being physically violent towards someone (not in self-defense), resulting in long-term health issues
Unjustly imprisoning or punishing someone (which also can involve damage to their reputation, and financial loss)
Coercing someone – forcing someone (in a non-defensive situation) to do something under threat of violence
Emotionally “abusing” a child such as contributing to them feeling like they’re not good enough to be loved
Polluting – negatively affecting people’s health, shortening lifespans
Being physically violent towards someone (not in self-defense), resulting in no long-term health issues
Damaging/destroying property (without the owner’s permission)
Stealing, which includes cheating, a form of stealing, such as in business or sports, including lying
Words that hurt someone’s reputation
Going against one’s conscience, including hating, lying, and not keeping one’s word, resulting in a less positive experience of life and making future value-destroying actions more likely if one suppresses their conscience
Not taking responsibility for one’s actions and emotions, thus lowering one’s self-esteem – this includes blaming (in one’s mind), lacking gratitude, and feeling entitled or like a victim
Acting without critically thinking about ethical consequences when have time to think things through
Not holding people accountable for their destructive actions, i.e., not upholding justice
Committing suicide
Not taking care of one’s health, both physical and mental (this includes doing risky things and not preparing for possible disasters)
Not helping when one could (i.e., without affecting one’s health or bringing about other significant value destruction) to save someone’s life or avoid them having long-term health issues
Killing an animal for reasons other than mercy, especially if endangered
Torturing an animal
Words that contribute to making violence more likely, such as calling for violence or encouraging anger and hate, or de-humanizing people (including oneself)
Not helping when one could (i.e., without affecting one’s health or bringing about other significant value destruction) to save an animal’s life or avoid them having long-term health issues
Polluting or destroying animal habitat
Being physically violent towards an animal
Words that encourage stealing, including words promoting entitlement, blame, and victim mentality (which also lowers people’s self-esteem)
Words that spread false data, without intent to lie, such as some logical fallacies and rumors
Not helping when one could to give others and oneself positive experiences, such as losing out on human connection by avoiding interacting with others
Words that discourage empathy, creativity, curiosity, critical thinking and honest effort
Not maximizing productivity (resulting in a loss in the expansion of options for positive experiences), including not pushing against one’s comfort to take on challenges or put in effort towards goals
Damaging/destroying one’s own property, or someone else’s, with their permission

Apr. 8, 2022 (edited Apr. 13, 2022):

Trump vs. Biden vs. H. Clinton: 3 new dishonorable speech ratings in action

I’ve recently come up with 3 new dishonorable speech ratings, for: 1) avoiding misrepresenting reality/misleading, 2) avoiding promoting personal irresponsibility, and 3) avoiding negativity. To give you an idea of these ratings in action, I analyzed the U.S. presidential party nomination speeches of Donald Trump in 2020 and 2016 and compared them to Joe Biden’s speech in 2020 and Hilary Clinton’s in 2016. Here are the results on a 1 to 20 scale, 20 being the best:

	Trump ‘20	Biden ‘20	Trump ‘16	H. Clinton ‘16
Suggested Overall Dishonorable Speech “Sentence” (1-20)	2	4	2	4
Avoiding Misrepresenting Reality/Misleading (1-20)	3	18	2	4
Avoiding Promoting Personal Irresponsibility (1-20)	5	3	4	3
Avoiding Negativity (1-20)	1	3	2	4

As a guide to the 1-20 scale, 20 means there was no dishonorable speech identified of the kind in that particular rating, 16-19 could be considered good, 10-15 fair, 5-9 poor, and 1-4 highly dishonorable.

Here are the ratings expressed in words per year, where the years for dishonorable speech are analogous to the years of a prison sentence. Higher words per year values are better, i.e., less dishonorable:

	Trump ‘20	Biden ‘20	Trump ‘16	H. Clinton ‘16
Speech length (minutes)	70.1	24.5	74.7	56.6
Suggested Dishonorable Speech “Sentence” (years)	868	194	528	345
Suggested Dishonorable Speech “Sentence” (words/yr)	8.0	16.5	9.6	15.6
Avoiding Misrepresenting Reality/Misleading (words/yr)	42	290	35	67
Avoiding Promoting Personal Irresponsibility (words/yr)	86	41	63	46
Avoiding Negativity (words/yr)	10	26	16	33

For the overall “suggested dishonorable speech sentence,” Trump in 2020 took about half as many words, on average, to “earn” 1 year of dishonorable speech sentence compared to Biden, and in 2016 about 60% as many words as Hilary Clinton. Trump rated better on avoiding promoting personal irresponsibility than either of the Democratic candidates, not as good on avoiding misrepresenting reality/misleading and somewhat worse on avoiding negativity. Biden and Hilary Clinton’s ratings were, on the whole, similar to each other, with Biden scoring significantly higher on avoiding misrepresenting reality/misleading.

Apr. 6, 2022:

14 kinds of dishonorable speech I believe politicians (too) commonly use

I think it’s important for voters to be able to recognize when politicians may be speaking dishonorably, especially in terms of how they may be misleading the public with their words. I’m going to present 14 kinds of dishonorable speech that, in my determination, politicians use, in order by how often I think they’re used, from most to least. To come up with this list, I utilized some statistics I’ve been gathering from party nomination acceptance speeches of U.S. presidential candidates – of which I’ve so far analyzed 6 Democrats’ and 5 Republicans’ speeches since 1984 for dishonorable speech.

Here then are some, in my opinion, common themes from politicians’ dishonorable speech:

Misrepresenting reality by offering opinion as fact.
Shaming, or implying bad intent, which implies someone’s a bad person.
Misrepresenting reality, through logical fallacies such as cherry picking, over-simplifying and hasty generalizing.
Implying wrongdoing or accusing of wrongdoing without supporting evidence.
Promoting victimhood or victim mentality, and we’re the party who’s going to help you or those other victims.
Taking quotes out of context to make them sound bad.
Using vague negative “buzz” words or phrases such as “radical left” and “leaving workers behind.”
Mocking.
Lying/misleading.
Making something out to be a crisis, and blaming the other side for it.
Promoting hate/prejudice – such as against the wealthy, “elites,” racists, sexists, or a certain ethnic group. Keep in mind that hate of haters is still hate.
Saying the other party voted against something. This can be a misleading over-simplification. Sometimes politicians vote against a bill that contains things people would like to have passed because the same bill contains other things people wouldn’t like to have passed.
Describing a partisan bill as “common sense” legislation, implying that if the other party doesn’t support it, they’re stupid or lack common sense, or possibly worse – maybe they don’t support it because they’re bad people.
Saying something like, “SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States) supports us and our position.” Or, “The Supreme Court confirmed we’re right.” The Supreme Court may rule the way it does on a case due to a legal technicality rather than supporting the sentiment behind that “side” of an issue.

Also, when politicians are interacting with others, such as in an interview or debate, they may use another kind of dishonorable speech, namely excessive interrupting.

That’s my list of 14 kinds of dishonorable speech I believe politicians commonly use. For an expanded version of this list, with examples, see my two-part video series here. I hope when you hear politicians say something similar to one of the entries on this list, you may stop and evaluate for yourself if they’re speaking dishonorably, and how their words may be misleading.

Apr. 4, 2022:

3 new dishonorable speech ratings

I use 37 categories of dishonorable speech to classify and rate politicians’ written and verbal communications with suggested dishonorable speech “sentences,” each measured in number of years, analogous to a prison sentence. This analogy shouldn’t be taken literally, I’m not suggesting that politicians should be locked up for name calling or blaming the other party for all the world’s problems. I just thought it would be helpful to use a system, by analogy, that people already have some kind of a feel for. You can read more about the rating system here. I’ve recently added three more ratings to politicians’ speech so people could be aware more specifically what sorts of differences there are between how candidates speak. These ratings are for: 1) avoiding misrepresenting reality and misleading (including offering opinion as if it were fact, conveying logical fallacies, and lying), 2) avoiding promoting personal irresponsibility (including victim mentality, entitlement and blame), and 3) avoiding negativity (such as about a political opponent or by promoting anger). Of my 37 categories of dishonorable speech, here are the ones I include in each of these new ratings:

Dishonorable speech categories in Avoiding Misrepresenting Reality/Misleading:

7. Misrepresenting/misquoting what someone does or says

11. Misrepresenting reality, as through logical fallacies

13. Offering opinion as fact

16. Overstating a problem

17. Understating a problem

23. Leveling

24. Value inverting

27. Promoting conspiracy theories

28. Revealing confidential info for personal gain

31. Lying/misleading

Dishonorable speech categories in Avoiding Promoting Personal Irresponsibility:

14. Blaming

15. Promoting entitlement/victimhood

18. Ambiguously joking about doing something unsafe

22. Not addressing something bad with someone directly

25. Ends justify the means

30. Spreading rumors

32. Saying the names of murderers or alleged murderers

36. Trial by media

37. Repeating someone’s dishonorable speech

Dishonorable speech categories in Avoiding Negativity:

1. Name calling/insults

2. Applying guilt by association

3. Shaming

4. Implying incompetence/wrongdoing

5. Accusing someone of wrongdoing w/o supporting data

6. Saying you’re frustrated with or scared of someone

8. Using vague negative terms

9. Comparing to someone/something bad

10. Saying something’s bad w/o being specific and/or acknowledging the good

12. Assuming/implying bad intent

14. Blaming

19. Using de-humanizing, accurate terms

20. Mocking

21. Being disrespectful

26. Gossiping

29. Sharing negative info from an unvetted source

33. Promoting hate/prejudice

34. Threatening to do something undesirable

35. Threatening/promoting violence or anger

I’ve put in bold some of the categories more commonly used by politicians. I’ve included one category, #14 blaming, in two different ratings – the one on personal irresponsibility and the one on negativity. All the other categories are only counted in one of the three ratings.

These ratings could be expressed in terms of how many words the politician communicated, on average, to rack up 1 year of a suggested dishonorable speech “sentence” for saying dishonorable things. I felt like this “words per year” unit might be difficult for people to wrap their heads around, so I tried to simplify things by coming up with ratings on a scale of 1 to 20. 20 is the best rating and means there was no dishonorable speech of the particular rating type in the examined communication. I then set the scale as linear from 1 to 19, when compared with the “words per year” units, and set the slope of this line to capture the typical range of dishonorable speech I determined to be present in U.S. politicians’ speech.

I’ll provide examples of these 3 new ratings in a future blog post. My hope is that they won’t be used as weapons, but that they may prove useful to voters when comparing political candidates. If enough voters factor dishonorable speech ratings into their decisions on who to vote for, perhaps politicians will be motivated to speak more honorably, and we may begin to shift the nature of political discourse in the U.S.

Mar. 30, 2022:

The difference between an honorable speech culture and a politically correct one

I have the impression that many people stop listening and go into “defy mode” when they feel that others are trying to impose their beliefs on them about what’s the “right” way to act or speak. A good example of this is political correctness (PC). From an article I recently read in The Atlantic, it seems that most Americans consider political correctness to be a problem. So I wanted to go over some of the issues I see with “political correctness culture,” as I understand it, and why I believe an “honorable speech culture” would be a better option. First, what are the similarities and differences between the two? Merriam-webster.com defines politically correct as “conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated.” Merriam-webster.com doesn’t provide a definition for honorable speech, but I define it as speech that ultimately supports love and value building over hate and value destruction. While I do think honorable speech and politically correct speech share some surface features, such as not using racial or ethnic slurs in hateful ways, there are also some significant differences between the two, in my opinion, including:

An honorable speech culture is one in which people try to inspire each other to speak more honorably, especially by leading by example, rather than try to punish people into it, which is how I perceive political correctness culture to be. Political correctness culture feels like if I don’t say the PC thing, then I’m a bad person and deserve to be punished, especially if I’m unrepentant for saying the non-PC thing. In an honorable speech culture, there’s no such thing as a “bad person,” just bad or destructive actions, and efforts are made to rectify and mitigate destruction without relying on hate-based punishment or threat of punishment. This may involve helping people be aware of the damages of their speech, including to themselves, but doing that in rapport and in a way that doesn’t come across as judgmental of the person as a person.
Political correctness is, I believe, based more on hate and fear than love, while true honorable speech is based on love. The hate and fears behind someone enforcing PC culture could include: wanting to feel “right” or like a good person, wanting to feel better about oneself by showing oneself to be “better” than others in terms of cultural sensitivity, and trying to get the approval of other PC “enforcers.” When someone wants to promote a true honorable speech culture, I believe they’re motivated by a love for all humans, including people who speak dishonorably, because those people are hurting themselves by doing it.
The way I see it, politically correct culture supports a victim mentality because there are victims who need to be protected from certain words. A victim mentality helps lower people’s self-esteem, in my opinion. Honorable speech culture supports personal responsibility, which I believe helps raise people’s self-esteem.

While politically correct culture and honorable speech culture share some similarities in terms of attempting to minimize some kinds of destructive speech, I believe honorable speech culture is the more preferable of the two because it’s based more on love, more on inspiring than punishing, and more on personal responsibility and raising self-esteem than victimhood and lowering self-esteem. I hope you’ll join me in promoting honorable speech, such as by leading by example, so we can live in a more loving, less punishing world.

Mar. 3, 2022:

How to honorably accuse someone of having done something bad

How do you most honorably accuse someone of having done something bad or destructive? It could be something criminal or against the law, or not, but still destructive. By the way, if you’re the victim of a crime, there are resources online that may be able to help you with handling the effects of this, and I encourage you to seek those out if you’re having difficulties. Let’s say you were the victim of a crime or bad thing, or a witness to it – somehow you have knowledge that implicates someone of doing something bad. What are some things to consider in your decision to accuse someone of having done something bad?

Are you being honest with yourself about what you’re really going for? Try to avoid letting your hate convince you that you’re really motivated by love. Can you bring up a love state for the person to help you take hate and a desire to impose punishment out of your motivation for accusing them? I know this may seem like a difficult thing to do for someone who you feel wronged you. I do believe it’ll generally make your experience of life better, though, to let go of any hate and anger you have while still retaining a desire for justice.
How sure are you that this person actually intentionally, or due to a lack of caution or caring, did the bad thing or things you think they did? If you were a witness, are there other possible explanations for what you heard or saw?
What danger do you believe this person presents? Is anyone in imminent danger of losing their life or suffering severe health consequences? Might this person cause other, what I’d consider lesser, destruction such as property damage or theft?
How likely is the loss of life or health or other damage, and how likely are your words to significantly lower the risk of this?
How much damage could your accusatory words potentially do to the reputation of the person you’d be talking about (which could affect their earning potential, their freedom, and their safety)? If your words of accusation are said in private, how likely could they become public, and how much could that potentially increase the damages? Assess the risk of you being wrong and the damages this could cause the person versus the potential risk of them doing more damage to others.
Is there any other way to lower the risk to life, health, and/or other things while minimizing the potential for damage that could come from your words?
At what risk are you putting yourself or people you care about by making an accusation, either privately or publicly?
If you aren’t the victim, or aren’t the only victim, what might the effect of the accusation be on the victim or victims, and would it be a good idea to consult them to understand their wishes before making accusations, especially public ones?
What precedent might you be setting with your words in this situation, and what could be the consequences of that? For instance, let’s say you’re only 80% sure that a particular person was the one who did the bad thing. Does it set a good precedent to publicly accuse them when there’s a 1 in 5 chance you could be wrong, and a potentially innocent person is going to have to live with the negative consequences of a false accusation for the rest of their lives? What about only a 1 in 50 chance, or a 1 in 500 chance of you being wrong? Where do you draw the line?
Did the person you are considering accusing tell you about their crime under confidence such as if you were a priest for their confession, or a therapist? This brings up questions of occupational ethics.

Let’s say you decide to go through with accusing someone. In how you word your accusation, I recommend following the 16 rules of thumb I gave here for speaking honorably about someone who’s done or allegedly done bad things. If you’re going to verbally accuse someone, it may be a good idea to write down the accusation first to reduce the risk of saying something dishonorable “off the cuff.” You have several options in how you accuse someone, ranging from private, 1-on-1 with the person, to public, such as on social media. There are several reasons you may want to keep an accusation private, including:

By making the accusation in private first, you give the person a chance to make things right themselves, which can help raise their self-esteem, and may lead to a more satisfying outcome for all
Keeping an accusation private may protect a victim or victims, if they don’t want things made public
Keeping an accusation private may protect innocent associates of the accused from repercussions
If you’re wrong about the person’s guilt or whether they did something on purpose or not, there’ll likely be much less collateral damage to show for it than if you went public
You may become a target of anger and hate for accusing someone in public, especially if they’re well-liked

There are also reasons you may want to make an accusation public. Some honorable reasons may include:

You have strong evidence of the person’s guilt, you think they’re dangerous and this seems to be the only way of stopping them from causing more damage
You have very strong evidence of the person’s guilt and you want to set an example as a deterrence strategy for others doing the same thing – if this is your only reason to make the accusation public, you may want to consider if the bad thing is bad enough to warrant the collateral damage, and whether the accusation will really act as much of a deterrent for others
You have very strong evidence of the person’s guilt, you’ve brought the accusation to them in private and they rejected making it right themselves, and you believe they should be held accountable to pay damages for the destruction they’ve caused

Some dishonorable reasons for making an accusation you believe to be true public may include some of the items on my list of “How to know if you’re doing something out of hate or love,” such as to get revenge, or attention, or to try to get ahead in business. Some people may believe a good reason to make an accusation public is that the public has a “right to know.” This might be the case, for instance, if the U.S. government were involved in some destructive conspiracy against its own people. But it may also not be the case, such as I don’t believe the public has the right to know about the sex lives of politicians, even if there might be allegations of cheating going on for married ones. I understand that an argument may be made that we need to know the character of the politician, and if they’re cheating on their spouse, that says something about their character, and I would say yes, it does say something about their character, but, in my opinion, that something is not relevant enough to how they’d handle themselves in office to justify the violation of their privacy. I don’t believe just because someone is a public figure, they no longer have a right to privacy, or, said differently, the people have a “right to know” about their private lives.

There are several ways you can make an accusation privately or semi-privately:

If it’s possible, and safe to do so, bring it up with the person you’re accusing first – was it a mistake they’re willing to try to rectify on their own? If it happened long ago, perhaps they’ve matured and/or have a different perspective now and would want to try to make amends? Ways to make the encounter more safe, but still 1-on-1 private, could be to bring a friend to stand outside while you talk to the person, or to have the accusation written down in advance somewhere that it would be found if anything happened to you. I believe it’s a good idea to document the private encounter with the person you’re accusing by writing down what was said as soon as possible afterwards.
Another option, which would likely keep the accusation relatively private, would be to tell it to a trusted friend. This would give you someone to back you up if you decide to make the accusation public later.
A further option that may be private or may end up public would be to share the accusation with a close associate or family member of the person you’re accusing, such as their business partner, parents, spouse, etc. You may want to do this if you feel these people could be of help to the person and/or ensuring their behavior doesn’t happen again. Before doing this, though, you may want to consider if the relations these people have to the person you would be accusing are what they appear, and if these people may be more motivated by short-sighted loyalty than doing what’s right.
If you take your accusation to the authorities, involving filing a police report, it may or may not remain private. There’s a chance that an investigation could get leaked to the press. Media can also request copies of documents under the freedom of information act, but these requests can be denied for various reasons that may vary by locality. It’s best to ask the police about their policies for keeping things confidential if you haven’t yet decided whether to keep your accusation confidential or make it public. The police could also do some investigating, and, if you’re the victim, you could decide to press charges or not some time after the initial accusation.

There are also multiple ways to make accusations publicly:

You could make the accusation in the mainstream media. I generally believe that if you go to law enforcement and they say that you don’t have a case, it may be worth leaving it at that. Keep trying to consider, “what if I’m wrong – am I giving the person sufficient benefit of the doubt, in particular, regarding their intent? Could there be alternative explanations for what I believe the person did that was bad that I haven’t considered?” Also, before taking an accusation to reputable mainstream media, consider the situation carefully because if they publish the accusation, it will likely result in significant damage being done to this person’s reputation – I believe that should be taken very seriously, especially in today’s day and age when information can spread easily via the internet, and, unfortunately, in my opinion, there’s not a lot of rational thought and consideration out in the general public for what are appropriate penalties for different transgressions, or, better yet, rehabilitation activities for those who may have committed them. A certain percentage of people who hear an accusation are going to believe it straight out. Worse than that, certain people who believe accusations and don’t see what they think is appropriate punishment being doled out may try to “make the world right” by imposing their own forms of punishment, such as online harassment, trying to get the person fired or imposing other economic loss, physical stalking, or worse. On top of that, even for people who try to give others the benefit of the doubt and don’t immediately believe accusations or try to impose punishment themselves, their ability to think about the accused is forever altered because that accusation will always be somewhere in the back of their mind, affecting how they interact with this person. This is part of why false accusations or even true accusations that don’t need to be made in public can be such damaging forms of dishonorable speech, and I believe we should think very carefully before making any public accusations. That said, reporters can do their own investigations and may dig up things the police didn’t find. The media can also influence law enforcement and the justice department to act, which has both good and bad effects, in my opinion. The good can be when the media holds law enforcement and prosecutors accountable, or helps them with things they may have missed. I believe there’s much more potential for bad, though, in possible pre-biasing of juries due to “trial by media,” pressure on prosecutors to get convictions not based on true assessments of likelihood of guilt but rather to placate some of the public (who have decided guilt with more limited information available to them), and propagation of a “punishment culture” (based on assumed rather than proven guilt) over a culture of innocent until proven guilty and having compassion for perpetrators, including trying to help them reform rather than just punish them and get them out of your sight. Also, the public may be pushing for prioritization of a case that doesn’t really deserve it over some of the other cases that they aren’t aware of that police are investigating. It can be frustrating when you feel like law enforcement isn’t doing their job, but try to remember that they have limited resources, and most of them are really trying to do the best they can, I believe.
If no reputable mainstream media outlet will run your story, it’s likely best not to accuse via social media or someone’s blog or podcast or talk show or Youtube channel. An exception may be if the person you’re accusing has control of the media and that’s why no one will publish your accusation. Also, I don’t believe making an accusation anonymously is honorable except perhaps in the most extreme cases, such as if there’s a serious imminent danger and the accuser’s life would be at great risk if their identity were known. Otherwise, I believe the accused have the right to face their accuser as part of being able to defend themselves against both false accusations, and the accuser simply being mistaken about their take on the situation.

Now, there are a couple of other circumstances I’d like to discuss in terms of added considerations. The first is if the person already has a public accusation or accusations against them, and you would be adding to it. I’ll consider two scenarios for this: 1) you’re answering questions by authorities in a criminal investigation, and 2) you would be making the accusation public, unrelated to any criminal investigation. In the first situation, you may want to consider if it’s most honorable to answer all the investigator’s questions or not if someone’s accused of one thing and you’re being asked about other bad things they may have done. If the government is allowed to open its investigation beyond an accusation it has “probable cause” for, then there’s the potential for an abuse of power whereby people could be targeted with something relatively minor to justify digging into their lives to find something more destructive that they may have done. I’d suggest consulting with legal counsel before deciding a course of action.

In the second situation, the person already has a certain amount of damage to their reputation from having an accusation or accusations out there about them, and you would be adding to this. The more accusations there are against someone, especially of a similar type, the more likely people are to believe them, in general. So your accusation could add significantly to the damage of the original accusation. One thing to consider here is could the original accusation be false? Especially in the case of politicians, people who want to do a political “hit job” on them could have someone make a false accusation of some sort, knowing that anyone with a similar accusation to make that’s actually based at least in part on truth would be more likely to come forward. So a question to ask yourself could be if you think it might be a political hit job, what could be the implications of contributing to that? I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist in either of these scenarios for pre-existing public accusations, but I do think the possibility of people other than the accused having bad intent should be considered.

A second circumstance to think about is if the person you would be accusing is deceased – I believe this changes things somewhat, at least in terms of value destruction in how you talk about them. It removes the option of accusing them one-on-one and removes the potential damage that person could do, unless they have followers who may continue their bad deeds. While their reputation is still likely important to people who loved them and businesses they may have built, accusing someone who’s dead will generally have fewer negative consequences than accusing someone who’s alive. Of course, they also won’t be able to defend themselves against accusations. If your motivation for accusing someone is to deter others from doing some similar bad thing by showing them they can’t get away with it, then bringing up accusations after someone’s dead may not be the best idea, since it tends to support that people can get away with doing bad things because this person effectively did get away with it by living out their life without having ever being accused during it.

Holding people accountable in a non-hateful way, and preventing future harm can contribute significantly to building more value in the world. However, I believe it’s a very serious thing to accuse someone of doing something destructive, and therefore, if it’s safe to take the time to do so, you should consider carefully how to proceed or not with the accusation.

Mar. 2, 2022:

What is personal responsibility? Why is it so important? And what tends to build or destroy it?

I’d like to talk about personal responsibility and why I believe it’s so important. Two of my 37 categories of dishonorable speech are blaming, and promoting entitlement and victimhood. These are all against personal responsibility and contribute to massive value destruction in the world, in my opinion. To understand how, first let’s define personal responsibility. Merriam-webster.com defines responsibility as the “state of being responsible,” and responsible as, among other definitions, “liable to be called to account as the primary cause, motive, or agent,” and as “able to answer for one’s conduct and obligations: trustworthy,” and also as “able to choose for oneself between right and wrong.”

I believe then to accept your personal responsibility means to recognize that you’re a causing agent in the world, to acknowledge the effects you have both within yourself and in the world, to accept the consequences of your actions, and, when you have damaging effects, to try to make things right. Personal responsibility means you don’t expect anyone to save you from your own effects, and you don’t blame others for your problems or emotions. One reason I believe personal responsibility is so important is that I don’t think you can build your self-esteem without some level of it. According to Merriam-Webster.com, self-esteem is “a confidence and satisfaction in oneself: self-respect.” If you don’t recognize the effects you have in the world as coming from you, how do you have confidence in yourself? And what do you base satisfaction in yourself on? You may delude yourself that only the good effects you have are because of you, and the bad effects are someone else’s fault, but this won’t lead to true self-esteem because it’s a false confidence in yourself – at some point the world will let you know that it isn’t true by making it nearly undeniably clear that you don’t always have good effects. I say “nearly undeniably” because it’s kind of amazing how good humans can be at making up stories for themselves to deny reality. When we deny our personal responsibility, we are basically lying to ourselves and others because we’re denying the reality of our effects. I don’t believe you can truly build your self-esteem without being honest with yourself. Also, denying your personal responsibility often involves a form of stealing, such as lessening the reputation of the person or people you’re blaming so your reputation may seem to not be lessened as much – this is like stealing some of their reputation for the sake of your own. Denying personal responsibility can result in a form of stealing as well if one side is made to pay more for their actions than is in line with their share of the responsibility for a situation. If you have a conscience, then it doesn’t feel good when you steal, and this also tends to lower your self-esteem, I believe. The way I see it, when you embrace your personal responsibility and make things right after you’ve caused damage, you gain true confidence in yourself to push through discomfort and do the right thing, and this truly increases your self-esteem.

Some of the advantages I see of personal responsibility include:

What I just mentioned – it’s the only way I believe you can raise your self-esteem – by taking responsibility for your successes and failures, and especially for your emotions
You can be joyful in any situation when you take responsibility for your emotions
It feels better for your conscience to know you’re not stealing or coercing
It positively affects those around you by setting a good example and exposing them to positive rather than negative comments and outlooks on life
It provides a path towards a less violent world – the more people who practice personal responsibility, I believe the less likely are dishonorable speech, stealing and violence

Some of the apparent disadvantages of accepting your personal responsibility could include:

It can feel uncomfortable – there’s no “off the hook” for your actions or lack of actions
You may not get what you want in the moment
It can feel unfair if others don’t seem to be accepting their personal responsibilities
It can seem like a lonely road
You don’t get to negatively bond with people

I believe we currently live in a culture lacking strong personal responsibility, and there are a number of things that contribute to this. I’m not saying these things don’t have other positives about them, I’m solely looking at their likely effects on personal responsibility. These include:

Bailouts or protecting people from the consequences of their decisions and actions – these can include corporate bailouts, disaster aid for people who didn’t prepare for foreseeable disaster, social safety nets, Chapter 11 (filing for bankruptcy), crowdfunding campaigns to pay for health expenses of people without health insurance, and not letting people (such as children) fail
Not giving people the opportunity to be responsible for things they could fail at
Not holding people accountable – this can include people getting away with bad things such as crimes and people getting away with treating someone poorly
Rewarding bad behavior – such as if a child throws a tantrum and you let them have their way
Blaming and making excuses – saying it was someone or something else’s fault
Not looking at broader responsibility for a situation instead of placing fault on one or two people
Promoting victimhood/victim mentality – such as complaining or saying, “Oh, you poor thing,” or “There’s nothing you could’ve done, it’s all their fault”
Denying responsibility for one’s emotions such as saying “I’m offended,” or “your words hurt me,” or “anyone would’ve been angry in your situation”
Promoting entitlement – this can include giving people things they haven’t earned (including taxing the rich and spending it on the poor), saying things like “healthcare is a right” or that the rich need to pay their “fair share,” and “spoiling” your child by giving them everything they want without having to earn it
Forcing/coercing people to do things that are “in their best interest” – this includes health mandates such as mask and vaccine mandates
Never talking about why personal responsibility matters
Punishment that doesn’t focus on helping the perpetrator heal their lack of personal responsibility and/or doesn’t give them opportunity to make reparations themselves
Stealing – such as movies, music, etc., that you may “get away with” in terms of not having negative external consequences, although there are still negative internal ones
Committing acts of violence
Not cleaning up after yourself
Not keeping your word and commitments
Speaking dishonorably
Voting and campaigning for candidates who promote entitlement and victim mentality
Always trying to be comfortable – valuing your comfort above most other things
Never admitting your mistakes; not acknowledging your own contributions to your successes
Not taking responsibility for a situation you caused such as abandoning your child or a pet you adopted
Going along with the crowd just to go along with the crowd or not going along with the crowd just to be defiant

Again, I’m not saying that things on this list don’t do other good in the world, just that they tend to contribute to decreased personal responsibility with consequences such as people having lower self-esteem, and there being more stealing and violence or at least threat of violence in the world.

Some things that could help build personal responsibility include:

Preferentially patronizing companies that promote responsibility over entitlement, and haven’t taken government bailouts
Giving children things to be responsible for such as cleaning up after themselves
Holding people accountable
Not rewarding bad behavior – being kind but firm
Stopping your blaming and making excuses and complaining
Discussing broader responsibility in a way that doesn’t victim shame, and looking for your own responsibility in everything
Promoting a “can do” mentality, such as saying, “What do you think you can do to change your situation?”
Accepting that you’re responsible for your emotions and when you react in anger, you’re choosing it, it’s not what the other person’s doing that’s causing you to be angry; also accepting that you don’t cause others’ emotions
Promoting earning rather than entitlement, and having and practicing having gratitude
Giving people the opportunity to experience the bad effects of their decisions so they’ll choose differently in the future rather than forcing them into doing what you think’s best for them
Educating people about the damages of not taking personal responsibility themselves and of encouraging others to not take it
Giving people the opportunity to make things right themselves rather than just imposing punishment on them
Committing to not stealing
Committing to non-violence
Cleaning up after yourself
Voting and campaigning for candidates who promote responsibility over entitlement
Taking on challenges – making goals, learning new skills and acknowledging the effort that went into achieving them – this helps to build your character by going against your comfort
Admitting your mistakes and taking credit for your successes
Keeping your word and commitments
Speaking more honorably
Taking on responsibility for another living thing such as owning a puppy, having a child, or even having house plants
Not going along with the crowd just to go along, but making your own assessment of the situation and acting in a way you think is right

I believe personal responsibility is of great importance in the world such as for people being able to build their self-esteem, and minimizing dishonorable speech, stealing, and violence. With awareness of what kinds of things help encourage and discourage personal responsibility, my hope is that some may take these into account in their decisions, and lean more towards promoting personal responsibility with their actions.

Feb. 28, 2022:

What is love (the non-romantic kind)?

I want to talk about what may be a lot deeper and more elusive of a concept than it first appears: love. I’m not talking about romantic love, I’m talking about love that’s more like what a parent feels for their child. On my website I define love as a feeling that acts as a motivating force to bring about a net increase in value in the world. And I define value as usefulness to people in ultimately supporting and promoting life, supporting people’s individual rights to their own lives and the products of their efforts, and in gaining “positive” experiences. “Ultimately” means taking into account the “sum total” of something’s usefulness, over the long-term. So what does all that mean? In simpler terms, if I love someone, I want them to have a good overall experience of life, and I’m motivated to do things to help ensure that they do. For example, if you’re a parent, don’t you want your child to be happy and healthy, and not be attacked or have their stuff stolen? And I believe love, in its purest form, is wanting that for everyone in the world. This doesn’t mean you love everyone equally, because some people may add more to your own positive experiences than others – for instance, your friends versus people you don’t know. But I believe there’s some base level of love for everyone – similar to, if you’re a dog or cat lover, you probably love all dogs and cats on some level, even if you have a few favorites. Also, I believe, in its truest sense, your love for any given human never goes away, no matter how bad the things they’ve done are. For instance, I definitely don’t love the things Hitler did – they were truly horrendous, in my opinion, but I can still love him as a human being – all human beings are amazing, unique life forms that show me a piece of myself, and have value and are lovable, no matter how destructive and hateful their actions may have been or are.

When you’re in a state of love, you feel joy at seeing others joyful, and when you see someone suffering or struggling, you feel their pain to some degree and you want to help them, but in a way that’s ultimately best for them. For example, if a child that you love does a bad thing, as long as it’s safe to do so, you’ll likely let them experience the consequences and take responsibility for their actions, even though this may be uncomfortable for them in the moment. This is because it will likely help them the most for the rest of their lives. Also, when you do things out of love, you don’t expect or feel entitled to anything in return. Your child may hate you for holding them accountable, but you do it out of love anyway.

Your love-based motivation can be added to by a projection into the future about how good or bad you’ll feel about your actions. This relates to your conscience – I don’t believe love can exist without one. Our conscience kicks in when we realize we destroyed value, thus keeping us on track to build rather than destroy value. I also don’t believe love could exist without empathy, or being able to try on what’s going on for others. If we weren’t able to try on other people’s experiences of life, why would we even care if their experiences were good or bad? They might as well be robots as far as we’d be concerned. So the ability to empathize is a minimum condition for love. The more you’re able to empathize with everyone, the more likely you are to love, but empathy by itself doesn’t guarantee love. Empathy can also fuel hate, such as if you hate someone for “making” another person feel bad, and you’re focused mainly on feeling empathy for the person who’s feeling bad. If all you want is to stop victims’ suffering, regardless of the consequences for the abuser or abusers, then you’re not motivated by a pure love. So if you have empathy, you’re capable of love, but you still have to choose love over hate.

The strength of your love manifests in your actions (or lack of actions) and decisions. Your ability to act based on love is not just a function of your love-based motivation, but of your love-opposing motivation, such as a desire to be comfortable. So the strength of how your love manifests depends on your character, or ability to do things that you normally wouldn’t want to do because they’re uncomfortable or painful. Going back to my definition of love as basically a feeling that motivates increasing value, the strength of your love can also be measured by how much you act to increase your character so you can draw on that strength when needed to increase value. Also, predicting what will actually lead to a net increase in value in the world takes careful thought, and people may very well disagree over some things. If you have strong feelings of love, you’ll be motivated to put in more thought and effort to try to become more accurate in your understanding of what increases and decreases net value.

In addition to love for other humans, or animals, or life in general, there’s self-love. And I believe if you don’t have self-love, then you don’t have a pure love for others, there’s always some self-hate that will get in the way of you acting purely out of love with them. So if you want to feel more love for others, work on feeling more love for yourself. Because no matter what you’ve done, no matter how bad you are at certain things, how unattractive you may be, or how unintelligent you are, you’re lovable. You are lovable, no matter what.

Now, just like love of another isn’t about helping them feel good in the short-term without regard for the long-term, self-love isn’t about just being as comfortable as you can right now because that seems like your most positive experience in the moment or immediate future. Self-love motivates you to go through some discomfort now to have positive experiences later like a clear conscience and higher self-esteem. And it’s based on feeling empathy for your future self. Practicing discipline and self-control can be motivated by self-love, though they’re uncomfortable in the moment. They can also be motivated by hate or fear such as fearing you won’t be loved if you’re overweight so you don’t eat the piece of cake. A self-loving version of this may be to realize that it builds your character to resist temptation and it’s better for your health to maintain a certain weight, so you don’t eat the cake.

Coming back to what is love: love is a feeling that motivates us to push through discomfort and act in a way that we believe increases net value in the world. I don’t know why exactly most humans are capable of love, but I imagine it comes from some survival of the species instinct. Whatever the reason, I’m glad we have it, because, the way I see it, it leads to much deeper, fuller, and richer experiences of life.

References: https://www.regain.us/advice/love/what-is-love-the-definition-behind-it/

Feb. 10, 2022:

The damages of gossip, rumors and conspiracy theories

What are the differences between gossip, rumors, and conspiracy theories, and what are the damages of each? First, what are the differences between gossip and rumors? merriam-webster.com provides one definition of gossip as a “rumor or report of an intimate nature.” And it defines rumor as “talk or opinion widely disseminated with no discernible source,” and also as a “statement… without known authority for its truth.” This implies to me that a key difference between gossip and rumors is that gossip is of an “intimate nature” while a rumor could be about nearly anything. So, for instance, gossip might be, “Did you hear John’s apparently been cheating on his wife?” While a rumor may be, “Did you hear that the new iPhone is supposed to have a screen that folds like an accordion?” I made that up, by the way. Gossip is often about romantic or sexually-related issues, but I believe it can also relate to health and wealth issues – things people may want to keep private. Also, gossip is behind someone’s back, while other forms of rumors generally aren’t. According to encyclopedia.com, rumors can be of different kinds: rumors indicating positive things could happen, ones indicating negative things could happen, and rumors that divide people (such as that some group is up to no good). The different kinds of rumors can have somewhat different damages, but there are many similarities as well.

In talking about the damages of spreading rumors, gossip, and conspiracy theories, I’ll be mentioning destruction of “value.” I define value as usefulness to people in supporting and promoting life, supporting people’s individual rights to their own lives and the products of their efforts, and in gaining “positive” experiences. So when I talk about destruction of value, it can mean loss of life or health, infringement on individual’s rights, and/or reductions in abilities of people to gain positive experiences. Also, I believe that limiting the options of well-intentioned people generally reduces value and the potential for future value building.

Rumors and gossip can lead to damages whether they’re true or not, although the nature of the damages may change somewhat based on veracity. In my opinion, there are some rumors that may be honorable to spread, meaning they’d lead to more ultimate value building than destruction, such as a rumor that may help save someone’s life. And some rumors, such as speculation on what some new superhero movie will feature, may be honorable if they’re spread between friends who all understand they’re just for entertainment value and to help them connect with each other, sort of like over the top trash talking between friends that’s all in good fun. That said, many rumors are dishonorable and have more damages than benefits.

For my lists of damages of spreading rumors and gossip, I got some ideas from an article on verywellfamily.com.

Some of the damages of spreading rumors that aren’t specifically gossip include:

It can limit people’s abilities to make the most well-informed, reality-based decisions and build real value because they may be distracted by untrue information
It supports lying to destroy value by giving a mechanism to avoid accountability for the spreading of lies because who knows where the rumor originally came from
It inspires people to have less character when they seek out rumors to satisfy their “need” to know
It promotes people being less able to discern what’s likely to be real from what’s not
If it’s a rumor of a possible positive outcome, it can inspire false hope which may inspire people to put in less effort
It promotes non-critical thinking, and, if it’s a rumor of a possible negative outcome, it can promote fear and anger-based decision-making, which limits options
If it’s a rumor that divides people, then it will likely inspire hate, possibly inspire people to do destructive actions, and likely inspire some people to dehumanize each other
It can go against your conscience if you recognize the damages of what you’re doing

Other categories of dishonorable speech can also be contained within rumors – for instance, implying someone has bad intent, or misrepresenting what someone said to make it sound bad. This means the damages of specific rumors could go beyond the damages I’ve just listed, depending on what further dishonorable speech they contain.

In addition to the damages just mentioned of spreading rumors, some of the additional damages of gossip include:

It can be a form of leveling, i.e., it can destroy value by mis-representing the true hierarchy of value, such as by implying that someone’s success in some field is not that big of a deal given their sexual transgressions
It can negatively affect the self-esteem of the subject of the gossip, as well as the gossiper and the person or people hearing the gossip
It limits the options of the person about whom the gossip was spoken by changing how people think about them
It limits people’s options, firstly in how they can think about the person who was the subject of the gossip, and secondly by presenting the possibility that the same fate could befall them
It destroys value (such as limiting options in how people think about someone or something) in a way that is indefensible due to no real data, vague language, innuendo, etc.
It promotes non-critical thinking, and fear and anger-based decision-making, which limits options, such as people limiting themselves from doing things that aren’t destructive but that they’re worried people may disapprove of and talk about
It supports a non-reality-based narrative that destroys value such as you are what you do and say
It’s disrespectful of the person or people about whom the gossip is spoken, and to the person or persons hearing the gossip
It can contribute to a lack of trust between the person about whom the gossip is shared and the people who share the gossip

Turning to the damages of conspiracy theories, merriam-webster.com defines conspiracy theory as “a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators,” and also as “a theory asserting that a secret of great importance is being kept from the public.” An example of a conspiracy theory is that the U.S. government staged the 9/11 attacks. The thing about conspiracy theories is that you can’t ultimately prove them incorrect, it’s just that they seem unlikely, and they don’t give people the benefit of the doubt, that is, they assume guilt by some powerful entity and its members. I don’t believe significant damages arise from considering a “conspiracy theory” in a scientific way as a possibility that can’t be ruled out. In my opinion, significant damages do arise when conspiracy theories are spread as likely correct by people with non-scientific minds, meaning non-critical thinking individuals who rely more on emotions than rational thoughts for what to believe (which I believe tends to be the vast majority of people in some area of their lives). Some people may also spread conspiracy theories not because they believe them themselves, but they want to “have fun” and prove how stupid other people are.

For my list of damages of spreading conspiracy theories, I got some ideas from a Frontiers in Psychology article. Some of the damages of spreading conspiracy theories include:

It distracts (limit options) from real value building
It limits people’s abilities to make the most well-informed, reality-based decisions
It’s disrespectful towards and reduces trust in the powerful entity claimed to be behind the conspiracy, thus limiting that entity’s options
It encourages people to be weaker because conspiracy theories promote that ordinary people can’t change much when powerful entities are controlling things
It may support violence against the powerful entity
It tends to divide people by those who believe conspiracies versus those who don’t and those who are part of the supposedly deceptive powerful entity versus those who are not
It may lead to a loss of trust of people of the conspiracy theorist, thus limiting that person’s options
It supports lying to destroy value by giving a mechanism to avoid accountability for the spreading of lies
It can go against your conscience if you recognize the damages of what you’re doing
It promotes people being less able to discern what’s likely to be real from what’s not
If the person spreading the conspiracy theory is doing it for fun to show how stupid people are to believe it, it lowers this person’s self-esteem and supports their hate

I hope this video gives you a better idea of the damages that can result from gossiping, spreading rumors, and spreading conspiracy theories, and that you may think about these damages the next time the urge to do one of them hits you.

Feb. 7, 2022:

Why we may or may not believe unsubstantiated accusations against someone

It seems like quite often in the news these days, we’re hearing about accusations of one kind or another: #MeToo accusations against men for sexual misconduct (and against some women, as well), corruption accusations against politicians, corporate embezzlement accusations, “whistleblowers” accusing corporations of other bad behavior, accusations of racism, and accusations or even just insinuations of various crimes such as tax evasion, money laundering, and murder. Simply having an accusation about you out there on the internet can lead to significant reputational damage and financial loss, if not worse, whether the accusation has real merit or not. And there can be damage to the accuser’s reputation and financial situation as well. I believe dishonorable speech plays a large role in this damage. Why would people speak dishonorably about the situation? It might just be to go along with the crowd, but it could also be motivated in part by their general beliefs about accusations. For instance, are you the type of person who tends to immediately believe all accusations, some but not others, or basically no accusations? And why do you think you tend to believe the things you do? I’m going to give some possible reasons you may or may not believe unsubstantiated accusations against someone. And by “unsubstantiated,” I mean not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The position I’m coming from, by the way, is that I believe it’s most honorable and most love-based to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume innocence until guilt is proven. And that goes for both the accused, for being innocent of what they’re accused of, and the accuser, for being innocent of lying.

Some things that may influence you to want to believe accusations, or that people are guilty are:

Not wanting to be “fooled” by wrongdoers (even if it means you may get fooled by the person who’s doing the accusing of wrongdoing, if they’re not being completely honest)
Believing where there’s smoke, there’s fire
You’ve never been falsely accused or known someone close to you who’s been so don’t believe it can happen
You may have been a victim of a similar crime so you know firsthand it can happen, and since you’d want people to believe your accusations, you want to believe others’ as well
Someone close to you who you trust has been a victim of a similar crime so you strongly believe it can happen and accusations of the sort should be believed
A desire for “fairness” – not wanting people to get away with things you haven’t gotten away with or don’t think you’d get away with
Wanting to be right and feel justified about not liking someone to begin with, that is, before hearing the accusation against them – this can also go for groups of people such as hating some racial group
You may know the accuser and believe they are credible
Wanting to support the accuser if you’re friends with them
You may know the accused and think they’re not credible, and/or capable of doing bad things based on a prior history you’ve experienced with them – pre-existing accusations can make new ones seem more credible
You want to support and believe in some cause such as racial justice or #MeToo
There is some truth that’s offered with the accusation that makes you more likely to think that the accusation must be true, too
You are the type of person who likes hating in general and supporting hate (such as against the accused)
You fear more bad things happening and you give yourself a sense of security if a perpetrator has been identified
You feel badly about yourself – if you find yourself always assuming the worst in others, I believe it’s a pretty good indication that you don’t feel good about yourself

Some things that may drive you to not believe unsubstantiated accusations (that’s not to say you wouldn’t take them seriously, just that you wouldn’t immediately accept them as truth or speak in a way that implies you’ve accepted them as truth) are:

Not wanting to be fooled by accusers, such as if they might be politically motivated
You might be someone who’s afraid of being wrong so you never “really” believe anything
You may have been falsely accused yourself so you know firsthand it can happen
Someone close to you who you trust has been falsely accused so you strongly believe it can happen
You’ve never been a victim or known a victim of this sort of thing so you don’t think it could happen
Wanting to support the principle of innocent until proven guilty
You may not like the accuser or the group the accuser comes from (women, men, a certain racial group, etc.), and want to justify or confirm you’re right in disliking them by believing they’re lying
You may know the accused and, if they’ve denied the accusations, believe they’re credible
You may like the accused and not want to believe they’d do anything bad
You may know the accuser and don’t believe they’re credible
You want to go against some cause such as racial justice or #MeToo
There’s some false or apparently false information offered with the accusation that makes it seem less believable
You are the type of person who likes loving and supporting love
You are the type of person who likes hating in general and supporting hate (such as against the accuser)

Those are my lists of 15 reasons we may believe unsubstantiated accusations against someone and 14 reasons we may not. My hope in identifying them is that people will be able to look at these lists and see why they may have the tendencies they do to believe or not believe accusations, and then perhaps avoid letting those tendencies motivate them to speak dishonorably about either the accuser or the accused.

Feb. 4, 2022:

The damages of leveling and value inversion

I want to talk about the damages of making everything the same level of goodness (also known as leveling), and of making good bad or bad good (also known as value inversion). By the way, these are category numbers 23 and 24 on my list of 37 categories of dishonorable speech.

Examples of leveling, or trying to make everything seem like it has the same value, include saying someone only succeeded because they were lucky (which can be taken as saying they’re at the same skill and effort level as those who didn’t succeed), and saying the person who came in last in a competition did just as well as the one who came in first. Examples of value inverting include saying smoking is cool, saying being too smart is bad because then you’re a nerd, and saying that making too much money is bad because then you’re greedy.

I believe a lot of leveling and value inversion come from a confusion that many people have about where their own value comes from. If you believe your only value comes from being attractive or smart or winning or being successful, then I think it can feel like a threat when we see others as “better” than us in these regards. If we acknowledge that all humans, including ourselves, are amazing creatures and have value just by being alive, I believe the urge to level or value invert lessens dramatically because we realize that they don’t actually raise us up. In fact, they do damages, which I’ll get to in a moment.

When I talk about the damages of leveling and value inversion, I’m talking about value being destroyed or not being built as much as it could be. And I define value as usefulness to people in ultimately supporting and promoting life, supporting people’s individual rights to their own lives and the products of their efforts, and in gaining “positive” experiences. So when I talk about destruction of value, it can mean loss of life or health, infringement on individuals’ rights, and/or reductions in abilities of people to gain positive experiences.

I believe the damages of leveling and value inversion are similar in type, though they may vary in degree. For both, the degree of damages are situation-dependent, and can be affected by audience size, how impressionable the audience is, etc.

The damages I see of leveling and value inversion include:

They promote people being less able to discern relative levels of value, so value is less likely to be built and more likely to be destroyed in the future
They can support a non-reality-based narrative that destroys value such as you are what you do and say – this tends to limit people in their willingness to learn through mistakes
They distract (limits options) from real value building – even if you don’t accept the way someone presents relative value levels, it’s a distraction to sift through
They inspire people to be less resourceful, put in less effort, and consider fewer options to make things happen in their lives – for instance, if everything’s the same value, why work for some things over others? This contributes to lowering self-esteem
They promote non-critical thinking, and fear and anger-based decision-making, which limits options
They limit people’s abilities to make the most well-informed, reality-based decisions
They’re disrespectful to the person or people the leveling or value inversion may be about
They can go against the person doing the leveling’s conscience if that person recognizes that they’re effectively lying by misrepresenting reality

I hope going through some of the damages of leveling and value inversion may inspire you to choose differently in the future if you find yourself considering using these forms of dishonorable speech.

Feb. 1, 2022:

The damages of blame and excuses

Blaming is, in my opinion, one of the most damaging categories of dishonorable speech, in part because it’s just so pervasive in our society. How much do we justify violence or trying to coerce someone into doing something out of fear because “they” pissed us off, which is blaming someone for our emotions? I believe the mentality of blame contributes to mass shootings, war, gang violence, and genocide. To me these all seem to involve the belief that someone else is the source of my problems and if I eliminate them, I’ll feel better. An alternate mentality, one of responsibility, may involve recognizing that I value life, and if I’m not getting what I want, the best solution for me and my conscience is to figure out what more honest effort I need to put in to get what I want.

To differentiate, blaming is claiming that someone else, not us, has responsibility, while excuses, whose damages I’ll go over as well, are claims that circumstances are responsible – again, not us. We can blame others and make excuses for things we’re partially responsible for such as the continuance of poverty in the world, and for things we’re totally responsible for, such as our emotions. And note that we can blame others for our positive emotions as well as our negative ones, such as thinking that someone “makes” us happy.

Even if blame isn’t explicitly communicated through words, it’s often apparent in your actions, I believe. So I’m going to go over some damages of both spoken and unspoken blame. When I speak about “damages” of blame and excuses, I’m talking about value being destroyed or not being built as much as it could be. And I define value as usefulness to people in ultimately supporting and promoting life, supporting people’s individual rights to their own lives and the products of their efforts, and in gaining “positive” experiences. Basically then when I talk about destruction of value, it can mean loss of life or health, infringement on individual’s rights, and/or reductions in abilities of people to gain positive experiences. I believe that limiting the options of well-intentioned people generally reduces value and the potential for future value building.

So some of the damages of unspoken blame include:

It limits the blamer’s options – such as their ability to avoid similar bad effects in the future – by making them weaker at causing things to happen in their lives
It limits the blamer’s options to make informed, reality-based decisions because they’ve denied the reality of their responsibility
It limits the blamer’s options in how they can think about the person or people they’re blaming
It limits the subject of the blame’s options with the person who’s blaming them in their head
It can result in the blamer being fearful of being blamed themselves since they know that others are capable of it because they themselves are – this limits how they interact with others such as how present they can be
It promotes non-critical thinking, and fear and anger-based decision-making, which tends to lead to sub-optimal decisions
It contributes to poor emotional regulation because it’s a denial that the blamer can regulate their emotions in a given situation
It contributes to low self-esteem
It distracts, taking time away from considering options for and putting in effort to earn the result they want
It’s disrespectful to the person or people being blamed
It supports violence when used as a justification for that
It promotes cheating (dishonesty about the blamer’s share of the responsibility) for personal gain, a form of stealing
It supports lying to destroy value by giving a mechanism to avoid self-accountability for lies (by claiming it was someone else’s fault)
Once they become aware that blaming is a form of lying by denying the reality of their responsibility, it can go against the blamer’s conscience to do it
It promotes them being less able to discern where true responsibility lies

Communicating blame through words leads to additional damages, many of which are similar in form to those from blaming in one’s head:

It limits other’s options – such as the ability to avoid similar bad effects in the future – by encouraging people to be weaker: to blame and deny responsibility
It limits other’s options to make informed, reality-based decisions
If the blame is done publicly, it limits the options of the person or persons being blamed by changing how people think about them
If done publicly, it limits other people’s options, firstly in how they can think about the person who was the subject of the blame, and secondly by presenting the possibility that the same fate of being blamed could befall them
It promotes non-critical thinking, and fear and anger-based decision-making, which tends to lead to sub-optimal decisions
It encourages others to have poor emotional regulation and low self-esteem
It distracts others, taking time away from them considering options for and putting in effort to get the results they want
It’s (even more) disrespectful to the person or people being blamed
It supports violence when people use blame as justification for that
It promotes people cheating (dishonesty) for personal gain, a form of stealing
It supports people lying to destroy value by giving a mechanism to avoid apparent accountability for lies
It promotes people being less able to discern where true responsibility lies

The damages of excuses are typically not as severe as those of blame due to not having damage to a “blame-ee,“ but they’re still there, with the damages to someone of making excuses in their head including:

It limits their options – such as the ability to avoid similar bad effects in the future – by making them weaker at causing things to happen in their lives
It limits their options to make informed, reality-based decisions because they’ve denied the reality of their responsibility
It promotes non-critical thinking, and fear and anger-based decision-making, which tends to lead to sub-optimal decisions
It contributes to poor emotional regulation because it’s a denial that they can regulate their emotions in a given situation
It contributes to low self-esteem
It distracts, taking time away from considering options for and putting in effort to earn the result they want
It supports violence when used as a justification for that
It promotes cheating (dishonesty about their share of the responsibility) for personal gain, a form of stealing
It supports lying to destroy value by giving a mechanism to avoid self-accountability for lies (by claiming it was something else’s fault)
Once they become aware that making excuses is a form of lying by denying the reality of their responsibility, it can go against their conscience to do it
It promotes them being less able to discern where true responsibility lies

If the excuses are spoken or written, the additional damages include:

It limits other’s options – such as the ability to avoid similar bad effects in the future – by encouraging people to be weaker: to make excuses and deny responsibility
It limits other’s options to make informed, reality-based decisions
It promotes non-critical thinking, and fear and anger-based decision-making, which tends to lead to sub-optimal decisions
It encourages others to have poor emotional regulation and low self-esteem
It distracts others, taking time away from them considering options for and putting in effort to get the results they want
It supports violence when people use excuses as justification for that
It promotes people cheating (dishonesty) for personal gain, a form of stealing
It supports people lying to destroy value by giving a mechanism to avoid apparent accountability for lies
It promotes people being less able to discern where true responsibility lies

When we consider how much damage especially blame, but also excuses, do in our life and in the world, it seems like a good next step would be to take more responsibility in our lives. I hope you’ll join me in attempting to do that.

Jan. 29, 2022:

How to speak honorably about people who’ve done or allegedly done bad things

Here are 16 rules of thumb I think could be useful for speaking honorably about a person who’s done or allegedly done bad things:

Stick to the facts as much as possible, and try to be accurate in your representation of those facts (and of reality in general) – avoid spreading rumors, gossip or conspiracy theories.
Say “alleged” or “allegedly,” when appropriate – if the person hasn’t been convicted in a court of law, then their criminal actions are alleged. If they haven’t been convicted, but they’ve admitted their crimes, you could say they’ve confessed to what they were alleged of doing. Keep in mind that sometimes confessions are false.
When offering your opinion, acknowledge it as opinion – for instance, say, “in my opinion,” or “I believe” to qualify your words.
Avoid name calling or insults – you may be absolutely horrified by what a person’s done, but this doesn’t make it OK to call them an “evil monster” or a “horrible human being,” in my opinion.
Talk about actions rather than personhoods. This involves avoiding de-humanizing terms that may effectively say “this person’s bad and they deserve everything bad that could happen to them.” In my opinion, examples of de-humanizing terms are “murderer” and “liar.” You could say instead that they’ve committed murder or they’ve told lies, because there’s still a human being doing the action, even if it’s bad.
Avoid over-simplification such as saying the person is just like some other person who’s done bad things. For example, don’t say that an alleged serial killer is just like Hitler.
Avoid making assumptions about the person’s intent if they haven’t explicitly stated themselves that it was bad – and even then they may be lying, such as to take the fall to protect someone else, or due to being coerced into a false confession. To be most accurate, you could state that they’ve said they had bad intent, if that were indeed the case.
Avoid placing all the blame on them for the bad things they’ve done and the bad results of those things – they’re definitely responsible for their bad actions, but those bad actions didn’t happen in isolation. If you ignore broader responsibility, someone else may be more likely to do similar bad things in the future. Try to find that broader responsibility, such as how you yourself may have contributed to a culture in which this person would’ve been more likely to do bad things – even if you never met or had anything to do with the person directly. One example is whenever I blame anyone else for my problems, I believe in a small but finite way I’m making mass shootings more likely because I’m supporting part of what I believe is the typical mentality behind them: one of blame of others.
Don’t talk about how upset the victims or alleged victims are as if it were an ultimate measure of the badness of the person’s actions or alleged actions – it’s only one factor to consider. Here’s something to think about to illustrate the point: let’s say two people had the exact same life savings, and the first person had half of their life savings stolen online by a stranger while the second person had their entire life savings stolen in this way. The second theft victim seemed much less upset about it than the first victim. Was the theft of half of a life savings somehow worse than the theft of an entire life savings because the first victim was more upset about it?
If they haven’t gone to trial yet, or even if they’re in the appeal stages, avoid saying things, especially on the internet or other places where your words could get amplified, that could decrease their chances of receiving a fair trial. An example of this might’ve been spreading the term “wilding” in reference to The Central Park Five case in 1989 – check out the documentary on it by Ken Burns for an example of how people can be falsely accused, even if they’ve admitted they did something bad.
Don’t try to stir up anger or violence against them – especially if the person hasn’t been arrested or gone to trial yet. Speaking honorably, by my definition, involves supporting love over hate, and this includes not trying to motivate the justice system, or someone outside the justice system, to act based upon fear, anger, or hate. I believe that if you want true justice, it’s best to focus on your love of justice rather than your hate of injustice. Then let that love drive you to put in the extra effort you may need to to honorably motivate those in the justice system to act.
Think about why you’re talking about this person at all – is it to educate others, protect others, to feel right, or perhaps to get attention for having a “juicy” thing to say about them? Try to be honest with yourself and if you find that your reasons are primarily dishonorable, consider not talking about the person at all.
Avoid focusing on what you hate about what they did or allegedly did – instead, you may try focusing on feeling the pain and sadness that comes with someone having done those things, as well as sadness for the victims – just be careful that you don’t let that drive you to hate which can, in turn, motivate dishonorable speech.
Avoid repeating others’ dishonorable speech – just because someone said something bad about this person doesn’t mean it’s justified to repeat it, even if the speaker was famous.
Avoid calling more attention than is necessary to the person who’s done or allegedly done bad, to avoid glorifying them or their actions or alleged actions.
Don’t lose track of the fact that you’re talking about a human being who has their own struggles, and try to have compassion for them. This will generally guide you to speak more honorably about them. If you have trouble humanizing them, perhaps think of what it’d be like if someone you loved and cared about did these things. Wouldn’t you still want to treat them as a human being?

Jan. 28, 2022:

Why speak honorably about people who’ve done or allegedly done bad things

People can do terrible things: murder, rape, torture. Why would you ever want to speak honorably about those who’ve done such things? Below are some benefits and disadvantages of speaking honorably about these people, including why I think the vast majority of the time, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Here are five benefits I see to speaking honorably about people who’ve done or allegedly done bad things:

It supports love. My definition of speaking honorably is speaking in a way that supports love, no matter who you’re talking about, and no matter what they’ve done.
If by chance you’re incorrect and they’re in fact innocent, you haven’t spoken badly about an innocent person. You haven’t forever negatively affected peoples’ opinions of someone who didn’t do the bad thing they were accused of doing. And even if they’re guilty of some bad thing, this doesn’t justify speaking badly about them for some other bad thing they didn’t do, in my opinion.
If you can speak honorably about and humanize someone who’s done really bad things, you can humanize anyone, including yourself. This can help you have more compassion for other people, and for yourself and your own struggle to do good, even if you’ve sometimes done bad.
You’ll likely feel better about yourself for not compromising your morals and values by speaking dishonorably about someone just because they may have done something dishonorable.
It could help build your character to push against adversity such as going against tendencies you may have to prove you’re right and punish people for doing bad. In this way you could gain a better sense of who you are and what you stand for.

On my website blog and also on my Youtube channel, I list 11 reasons you may want to speak honorably in general, so you can check out that list for more possible reasons.

And why might you not want to speak honorably about someone who’s done or allegedly done bad things? Some possible disadvantages of speaking honorably in this situation include:

It generally takes more effort to choose your words carefully and speak honorably.
You might not succeed at proving you’re right or good, or get to be the apparent hero, or get revenge, or get to negatively bond with someone.
Someone might get away with something they’ve done if you don’t, for instance, lie to increase the chances of them getting charged and prosecuted for it.
More damage may be done by this person or another who now thinks they can get away with things because this person did.

I have a list on my website of 10 reasons people speak dishonorably and a video about it on my YouTube channel, so you can check those to see if you think there may be other disadvantages for you that I haven’t included here.

I believe the third and fourth disadvantages above, that someone may get away with something or do more damage, are most often used to justify speaking dishonorably about someone. Since dishonorable speech causes irreversible damage to someone’s reputation, I think we should hold a pretty high bar, I believe much higher than most people think, for when something that would normally be dishonorable speech actually may become the most honorable thing to say given the situation if there is a clear and present danger. My definition of honorable speech again is that it ultimately upholds love over hate, or value building over value destruction in the world. You’ll have to make the assessment for yourself whether your words ultimately support love over hate, but here are some considerations that may help you determine this:

Are you being honest with yourself about what you’re really going for? I think it’s best to try to avoid letting your hate convince you that you’re really motivated by love.
What danger do you believe this person presents? Is anyone in imminent danger of losing their life or suffering severe health consequences? Might this person cause other destruction, that I personally would generally consider to be lesser, such as property damage or theft?
How likely is the loss of life or health or other damage, and how likely are your words to significantly lower the risk of this?
How much damage could your words potentially do to the reputation of the person you’d be talking about (which could affect their earning potential, their freedom, and their safety)? If your words are said in private, how likely could they become public?
How sure are you that this person actually intentionally, or due to lack of caution or caring, did the bad thing or things you think they did?
Is there any other way to lower the risk to life, health, and/or other things while minimizing the potential for damage that could come from your words?
What precedent might you be setting with your words in this situation, and what could be the consequences of that?

That’s quite a few things to consider, but again, I believe we should hold a pretty high bar when our negative words could affect someone’s reputation, earning potential, and freedom so much, so I’d recommend erring on the side of speaking honorably the vast majority of the time.

Those were my lists of 5 reasons to speak honorably and 4 to not speak honorably about someone who’s done or allegedly done bad things, as well as some considerations in when it may be the most honorable thing to say negative, normally dishonorable things about a person’s actions. I hope the above might make you think twice before speaking dishonorably about someone just because they may have done something dishonorable. Even if they’ve done something bad, they’re still a person and still deserving to be spoken about honorably, in my opinion.

Jan. 12, 2022:

How can we inspire politicians to speak (and act) more honorably?

I’ve previously written a blog on 5 reasons you may want to care that politicians speak more honorably, see the link to it in the description for this video. Assuming that you do care, how do we inspire politicians to speak (and act) more honorably? Here are 9 ideas for doing so:

Vote for candidates who speak and act the most honorably.
Write to your political party to say you’d like to see them supporting candidates who speak honorably, as this is important to you.
If you’re active in your political party’s organization, lobby to have something about speaking and acting honorably written into the party platform.
Help honorable candidates with their campaigns.
Speak more honorably yourself, especially publicly, such as on social media – the more honorably the general population speaks, likely the more honorably our politicians will speak.
If you’re someone who does your best to speak honorably, consider running for office to set an example of how to run an honorable campaign.
Don’t click on articles or subscribe to news services that tend to broadcast the most dishonorable things politicians say – this may make media less likely to amplify politicians’ dishonorable speech, and politicians less likely to speak dishonorably because their words won’t get amplified as much as they’d like.
Write “suggested more honorable versions” of things politicians say, especially if they’re on your side of the political spectrum. There are examples of this on my website and on these Twitter accounts. Sometimes people either don’t see the real damages of what they’re doing or don’t think there’s a viable other way of doing them, and writing “suggested more honorable versions” of things politicians say, such as on Twitter may help show them both of these.
This may seem like a shameless plug, but pay me to analyze a politician’s speech for dishonor and publish the results. You can contact me through my website. It’s not about the money for me, but it is about setting up and supporting systems in which people get paid for doing good in the world – because how do you encourage more people to do more good in the world? Making it profitable certainly seems like a good way to me.

Those are 9 ideas for helping inspire politicians to speak and act more honorably. Some of them involve more work than others, but I hope this list will inspire you to try at least one of these things to help move the needle towards more honor in politics.

Jan. 10, 2022:

Some on the Right and the Left use dehumanizing terms: examples and damages

On the one-year anniversary of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, I heard what I consider to be dehumanizing terms used to describe the people involved in the attack. Specifically, the terms were: mob, rioters, and insurrectionists. Merriam-Webster.com defines dehumanizing as “depriving someone of human qualities, personality or dignity.” When we refer to someone or a group of people in a way that has a negative connotation, in my opinion that tends to deprive them, in the ear of the listener, of other human qualities they may have. Calling someone a “rioter” could be considered dehumanizing, while referring to them as “a person who participated in a riot” generally would not be, since we’re acknowledging that they’re a person. I believe more people from the left side of the political spectrum than the right side have used “mob,” “rioters” and “insurrectionists” in regards to those involved in the January 6th attack. Interestingly, it seems to me that the left side of the political spectrum more often than the right side calls for an end to dehumanizing language, such as “illegal immigrants” or “illegals” for undocumented immigrants.

What I’d like to convey here is that some people on both sides of the political spectrum use dehumanizing terms. And I’d like to propose that there are damages to using dehumanizing terms regardless of what human being you’re talking about, regardless of how much power they have, what group they identify with, their social status, their actions, their intents, or good or bad things that’ve happened to them. Basically, regardless of if they’re seen as a victim, or as an abuser, oppressor, or aggressor, I believe it destroys value to call any of them by dehumanizing terms.

Some of the damages of using dehumanizing terms include:

1) it promotes hate against the people being presented as bad, less than human things,

2) it may make violence more likely against those people,

3) it limits the options of the people who are the subject of the dehumanizing term by changing how people think about them,

4) it limits the options of other people, firstly in how they can think about the people who were subject to the dehumanizing term, and secondly by presenting the possibility that the same fate could befall them, and

5) it promotes non-critical thinking, and fear- and anger-based decision-making, which limits options, and generally results in less optimal decisions.

Here are a few examples of dehumanizing terms I believe are fairly commonly used by some people on the Left and some on the Right.

Dehumanizing terms used by some people on the Left:

Regarding Jan. 6:

Mob
Insurrectionist
Rioter

Regarding social justice:

Racist
White supremacist
Bigot
Fascist
Misogynist

Regarding COVID-19:

Anti-vaxxer

Regarding wealthy people:

The 1%

Dehumanizing terms used by some people on the Right:

Regarding undocumented immigrants:

Illegal immigrants
Illegals

Regarding allegedly violent Muslim people:

Terrorist
Jihadist

Regarding social justice:

Snowflake
Social justice warrior

Regarding people on the Left:

Radical
Extremist
Socialist

These aren’t meant to be exhaustive lists, especially since basically any sort of name calling could be considered dehumanizing. They’re also not meant to be fodder for arguments about which side is worse in its dehumanizing terminology. My hope is that listing these words and understanding some of their damages will draw attention to the use of dehumanizing terms on both sides of the political spectrum, and perhaps inspire a few people to choose their words differently.

Jan. 6, 2022:

6 Reasons to love people who are driven by hate

I recently got the following question on a YouTube video: “Why would anyone love white supremacists?” So I want to go over 6 reasons to love people who are driven by hate or appear to be driven by hate. First, what do I mean by loving someone? Basically, I mean recognizing they have value simply by being a human being, independent of their actions, and also wanting what’s best for them similar to how a parent wants what’s best for their child. This would include wanting them to have a better experience of life by letting go of their hate and becoming more loving. It would also include speaking honorably about them, or supporting love over hate in the way you speak about them.

Here are 6 reasons you my want to love people who are driven by hate:

1) Loving those who are driven by hate as people has nothing to do with loving their beliefs or their actions – you can still firmly stand against these while feeling the benefits for yourself of loving rather than hating,

2) Hate begets hate. If you don’t love people who are driven by hate, then on some level you hate them and, in my opinion, hate in any form ultimately brings about more hate,

3) So you can love all of yourself – if you hate a person, I believe this ultimately comes back to hating part of yourself that you don’t want to accept and that you see in them,

4) All people are worthy of love, in my opinion, regardless of their destructive actions, which often originate from their struggles, fears, and confusions,

5) Hating a person because you believe their actions are unjust distracts from standing against the actual injustice. Further, I believe it adds to the injustice because, when we consider that all people are worthy of love, hating someone is an injustice in itself, and

6) When you turn your own hate into love, you may help inspire others to do the same, and clear a path to a better world based on love rather than hate.

Notice that I used the phrase “people who are driven by hate” rather than the word “haters” above because I wanted to emphasize that white supremacists, racists, bigots, etc. are all people.

Dec. 31, 2021:

Why honor the office of the president?

What does it mean to “honor” the office of the president, and why might we want to do that? merriam-webster.com gives one definition of to honor as “to regard or treat (someone) with admiration and respect” and also “to give special recognition to.” Putting these two together, to honor the office of the president is to give special recognition to the office and treat it with respect. Further, I believe part of how we do this is by giving special recognition to the office holders, past and present, and by treating them with respect. To be clear, honoring the position doesn’t mean you have to agree with the president or their actions, but, in my opinion, it does mean giving them the benefit of the doubt about their intentions and not attacking them as a person.

Here are 3 reasons to honor the office of the president of the United States. To help build this list, I consulted an article from timesleaderonline.com titled “Honor the presidency”:

The office of the president is a representation of our democracy and our rights and privileges as American citizens, including the right to vote. So if you dishonor the office, such as by saying they’re all a bunch of crooks, then, in a way, you’re dishonoring your own rights. It’s almost like you’re voting with your dishonorable words for not having the legal right to vote for our leaders. As I see it, this is because you’re effectively conveying that the office of the president isn’t worthy of respect and, by extension, neither is our right to vote.
Honoring the presidency acknowledges the sacrifices it takes to achieve that office and the great responsibility and continued sacrifices that come with it. Do you think someone who makes sacrifices and takes on responsibility is deserving of respect? Would you want your own sacrifices and responsibilities to be respected? I believe if you value something and want to see more of it in the world, one way to support it is by treating it with respect. So if you want to see more people taking on responsibility with its associated sacrifices, show them respect for doing so.
Honoring the presidency may inspire presidents to do better to “live up” to the office. If someone shows no appreciation of your efforts and struggles, do you feel more inspired to do what’s right, or less? What about if they treat you like a crook? Some in this situation may think, “Well, they think I’m a crook anyway, might as well bend the rules a bit.” If we speak about the president with reverence, even when we vehemently disagree with them, I believe it can help bring home to them more weight and meaning for their actions, perhaps inspiring them to do better.

So, to sum up, if you value our democracy and our rights as Americans, if you value people making sacrifices and taking on responsibility, and if you want our presidents to strive to do better, then you may want to honor the office of the president by speaking honorably about its office holders, both past and present.

Dec. 21, 2021:

Framework for determining dishonor in humor

Do you love off-color humor and jokes, and feel people are just too darn sensitive these days? Or, are you more on the side of thinking people, such as comedians, should be more sensitive to the fact that their words can be hurtful and there can be real-world negative effects from their jokes? Well I’m here to tell you you’re both right… in a way, at least in my opinion. In this blog, I’ll talk about how jokes and humor can ultimately support hate or love, that is, value destruction or value building. And I’ll go over a framework for how we might determine for ourselves which one we think it is, hate or love.

What I’m going to try to do is differentiate “honorable” from “dishonorable” jokes or humor – similarly to how I define dishonorable speech, I define dishonorable humor as humor that ultimately supports hate and value destruction over love and value building. And honorable humor would be humor that supports love and value building over hate and value destruction. I define value as how ultimately useful something is to people in supporting and promoting life, upholding individuals’ rights to their own bodies and the products of their efforts, and gaining “positive” experiences (where “positive” can be objective, if it helps avoid death, or subjective). It’s the “ultimately supports hate” that’s gonna be the real key for figuring out if a joke is dishonorable or not because many jokes will have both value building and destroying aspects to them, but we’re looking at the net effect, or sum total effect of each joke.

What sorts of things should we consider for determining whether a joke is dishonorable or not?

Who was telling the joke, to whom, and under what circumstances?
What was the intent behind the telling of the joke – was it ultimately for more hateful or loving reasons?
What’s the apparent audience reaction – do people seem to get upset, be indifferent, or do they laugh? (And the audience can include who the joke was about if it was about a particular person or group of people)
What might the effects be beyond apparent audience reaction – such as are people more likely to do hateful actions after hearing a certain joke? (In particular towards the subject of the joke)

First, to determine if there’s likely to be a net value increase or decrease from telling a joke, I believe we need to consider the source of the humor, such as if it’s a politician, a comedian, or an everyday person. I’ve ranked the different sources of jokes in terms of who I generally believe should be held to the highest standard down to who should be held to the lowest standard in terms of what’s dishonorable to say publicly: 1) journalists – they have a broad audience and, in theory at least, people go to them for the truth, 2) politicians – they also have a broad audience and are leaders, 3) business leaders, in particular in regards to their business sector or the economy, where misinterpretation of humor could result in negative effects, 4) celebrities (including social media influencers), who can have a broad audience and aren’t necessarily expected to be joking all the time, 5) comedians, who can have a broad audience and, at least when performing, people expect to be making jokes, including some that may be a little edgy if that’s in the comedian’s track record or advertised as a disclaimer for the show, 6) everyday people, who generally don’t have a broad audience, for instance, while joking with a clerk at the grocery store with others in line behind them, and 7) academics, or professors.

After the source of the humor, the audience, and the circumstances, let’s talk about intent. In my opinion, if the intent is hateful or to hurt, the joke is dishonorable even if everyone in the world likes it and thinks it’s great. The joke was meant to cause value destruction, and just because the joke teller didn’t get the result with it they were hoping for doesn’t make it honorable humor. I believe we can never 100% know someone’s intent, but I do think we can know it beyond a reasonable doubt. And I believe it’s generally best to give someone the benefit of the doubt on what their intent really was.

On the flip side, if you’re telling a joke and have, or believe you have, good intent in doing so, that doesn’t automatically make it honorable, I don’t think. Maybe you totally misjudged your audience and that they would take the joke negatively. Before we get to audience reaction, though, let’s look at people’s possible intents in telling jokes:

Why might people tell jokes? (Generally in order from most value building to least value building intent)

to connect with others
to help others see the humor in life, even when “bad” things happen
to help others laugh and have fun
to have fun, to laugh themselves
to defuse situations, stay out of fights (I’ve definitely done that)
to try to understand what people find funny
to “test the waters” around a serious subject they’re afraid to talk about directly
to seduce someone, get sex
as a shield to being/feeling vulnerable (I’ve never done that, mm mm)
to deal with anxiety
to be liked
to put others down, to feel superior
as a passive aggressive way of saying something – “I was just joking, ha, ha”
to get people more comfortable with them and gain trust (that they’re not going to hurt someone) (this can destroy value if there’s bad intent behind it, such as in building a false trust, but it can also build value when there’s good intent behind it)
to promote a hateful ideology

It’s also interesting, I think, to consider why comedians might tell jokes. To help me build this list, I consulted an article from Psychology Today titled “Why Do Comedians Become Comedians?” by Gil Greengross.

Why might comedians tell jokes? (Again, generally in order from most value building to least value building intent)

to try to bring attention to and right wrongs they see in the world
because they love people and want to help them laugh and have a good experience
to connect with their audience
to overcome fears
to make money
to get sex
to deal with anxiety
to have “success” or feel successful because it’s what they’re good at
to get “love” or prove they’re good or worthy
to get away with saying hateful stuff (such as with a claim of “artistic license”)
to promote a hateful ideology

So, as you can see from these lists, there are a lot of different reasons people may use humor, and they may have multiple intents behind telling a joke, some of them value building and some value destroying. These possible reasons give you some things to think about when trying to determine someone’s intent or intents – but again, it’s difficult to know one’s intent without some reasonable level of uncertainty, and I believe it’s generally best to give someone the benefit of the doubt.

What about apparent audience reaction? Is the reaction of the person or persons you’re telling the joke to, or even someone who hears about it later, the ultimate determiner of if a joke was honorable in that scenario? In my opinion, it’s a factor, but no, it’s not the ultimate determiner. For one thing, people may laugh to be polite or fit in or not make a scene, but be secretly upset. And if someone gets upset by a joke you tell, does that automatically mean it was dishonorable? I don’t think so for this, either. Have you ever known a child to get upset that they had to go to bed at a certain time or couldn’t have candy right before dinner? I’d say the vast majority of us still have this little screaming, irrational child within us that pops up now and again in some aspect of our lives. So if we get upset, it may not be for the most honorable or value building of reasons.

An example case when negative audience reaction can indicate that a joke’s dishonorable may be if someone gets an initial bad reaction from someone they’re teasing and they keep teasing that person until they cry.

For effects of humor beyond apparent audience reaction, here is a list of possible value building from humor:

It can help people bond or connect with others
It can help bring about positive emotions and experiences (improved mental health, less stress) – most people enjoy laughing, except maybe when you get to that point when you’ve laughed so much that your stomach muscles hurt, and then you’re like, “no more, stop, please! I can’t breathe!”
It can help expand the number of angles you see things from
It can help avoid violence
It can help as a persuasive tactic, such as in sales
It can help build trust
It can help bring attention to injustices in a non-confrontational way
Comedy supports entire industries and livelihoods
It can help people build a thicker skin/become less sensitive
It can help hold people’s attention to get a serious message across

By the way, to help me build this list of possible value in jokes and humor, I consulted an article from humorthatworks.com titled “30 Benefits of Humor at Work.”

Some possible value destruction from jokes and humor include:

It can be used to spread hate
It can lead to negative bonding between people who then help amplify each other’s hate/violence
It can promote blame/victimhood
It can promote violence (including self-inflicted violence)
It can promote objectification/de-humanization of people
It can help build unwarranted trust when a destructive hidden agenda is present
It can destroy trust if humor is seen as attacking or passive/aggressive
It can lower the joke teller’s self-esteem, knowing they’re going for “cheap laughs”
It can distract from serious issues
It can contribute to people feeling somehow less than
It can contribute to dividing people based on differences in what they find funny

In my opinion, humor as a whole, throughout time, has contributed way way way more value building to the world than value destruction. Like way more. Without humor, I’m not sure that humanity would’ve ever gotten out of caves. I’m serious. How would we ever have been able to put up with each other if not for humor?

Now, I’d like to bring up one thing that I think can have a large effect on the value building or value destroying equation for humor: people’s self-esteem. If you tease someone with low self-esteem versus someone with high self-esteem, you can get a completely different reaction from them. Teasing can also have significantly different effects beyond that immediate reaction, such as the low self-esteem person starting to question if they really are the thing they feel ridiculed for, which could lead to a further lowering of their self-esteem. I believe low self-esteem always comes from a lack of taking responsibility, in some form. So that would mean that if you want to raise your self-esteem, take responsibility for something, in particular, for your emotions. And I believe people raising their self-esteem is a great way to build value in the world – the higher your self-esteem, generally the more positive your experiences of life are going to be.

Getting back to the beginning of this blog when I mentioned some people thinking others are too sensitive about jokes, and other people thinking joke tellers aren’t sensitive enough to the effects of their jokes, how does this relate to self-esteem? Well, in my view, neither side is taking full responsibility for their emotions. At the same time, both sides may have valid points (this is how I said “you’re both right” in the beginning of this blog): there’d be a certain amount of value built by people taking responsibility for their emotions such as in not being so “sensitive” about jokes, and there’d be a certain value built if people had more empathy, compassion and consideration for each other, and were more sensitive to how their jokes may affect others. By the way, empathy is actually a tool you can use to help you take more responsibility because, when you try on what things are like for others, it can help you more fully understand the effects of your actions. So in a way, both sides are arguing for some responsibility, just not full responsibility, in my opinion. You’re both right about different parts of the picture, at least the way I see it.

Nov. 7, 2021:

Possible hate behind calling someone a social justice warrior (SJW)

Do you believe the vast majority of people who’ve ever called anyone a social justice warrior, either in their mind or out loud, had some level of hate behind those words? I do, but I also don’t think hate makes someone a bad person, it just has destructive consequences, at the very least for the person carrying the hate. I’ve already done a blog trying to help “social justice warriors” hate less and love more – now it’s time for me to try to do the same for all the social justice warrior-name callers out there. Towards that goal, I’ll go over 8 kinds of hate the name callers may have, and how, in name calling, they’re probably doing something similar to what the “social justice warriors” they hate are doing. My hope is this list may help people see that no one’s on the moral high ground or somehow right and justified when they hate. Here then are 8 things a social justice warrior-name caller may hate regarding “social justice warriors” or SJW’s for short:

That the SJW may get in the way of the name caller getting what they want. Not getting what you want, or more accurately, what you believe you’re entitled to, is a common reason for people to get angry and hate, in my opinion. I also believe we’re basically not entitled to anything, including justice, so the anger and hate aren’t justified. The name caller is likely being similar to the SJW here in that by calling the person an SJW, they may get in the way of what that SJW wants. Examples of what the name caller could want include to be able to hear off-color jokes from their favorite comedian, to speak their mind without having to worry about getting chastised because someone got upset, or even to see the cause of social justice succeed, but they think the SJW’s methods are hurting the chances of that.
That SJW’s, in apparently going for righting an injustice, are just propagating a different kind of injustice – it may feel unjust to a name caller that an SJW is making a bigger deal out of something than the name caller thinks is appropriate, especially when compared to other, “larger” injustices in the world. This is a subset of number 1 in that the name caller is not getting what they want, namely justice. Here, in hating a perceived injustice, the name caller is kind of doing the same thing as an SJW.
That SJW’s bring up things that “make” name callers feel guilty. Again, this is a subset of number 1 in that the name caller is not getting what they want, in this case to not feel guilty. In calling someone an SJW, a name caller may be doing something similar to the SJW in that they may be trying to make the SJW feel guilty or bad about the way they’re going about things. (Now, numbers 1 through 3 on this list are about the name caller not getting what they want or feel they’re entitled to. The remaining items on my list have to do, at least in part, with what the name caller thinks the SJW is going for when they get in the way of what the name caller wants. There are two issues I’d like to point out about this: first, we can never be 100% sure of what someone else is going for, and second, if we get angry about what we think someone’s going for, it’s because we think it’s bad to go for that and we hate the part of ourselves that goes for or wants to go for that. So, ultimately, this kind of hate comes back to a hate of part of ourselves the other person is showing us through their actions. The good news is that if we can come to accept that part of us, which doesn’t mean we have to indulge in it, this hate is likely to go away.)
SJWs’ “holier than thou” attitudes. I believe the hate here likely comes from two things: the first being that the name caller may feel thwarted from getting what they want, which could be to not feel less than. This less than feeling can come from having a fundamental belief, even if not a conscious one, that you’re somehow inferior or not worthy as a person, so you get angry when someone seems to show this inferiority to you by acting “better” than you. The second thing the hate likely comes from is what the name caller thinks the SJW is going for in acting “holier than thou.” This could indicate the name caller hates the part of themselves that acts superior and treats others as less than, such as to try to raise themselves up. Here name callers themselves may be acting a bit “holier than thou” by calling someone a social justice warrior as if that person were somehow inferior because of it.
That SJW’s are really just out to ruin other people’s fun, such as by trying to pressure comedians to not tell off-color jokes. To me, this indicates that the name caller hates the part of themselves that tries to ruin other people’s fun. By calling those critical of certain comedians SJW’s, name callers may also be trying to ruin SJWs’ “fun” in getting whatever change SJW’s want to see enacted. A name caller may claim this is just an eye-for-an-eye payback, so it’s justified, but I would argue that it’s hate-based and therefore not justified.
That SJW’s are out of touch with reality or “stupid.” In my opinion, this indicates that the name caller hates the part of themselves that’s “stupid.” And the name caller’s doing something similar to what they think the SJW’s doing by being “out of reality” and not recognizing the source of their hate as being themselves, not the SJW.
That SJW’s are “weak” and play the victim – think “snowflake.” This, I believe, indicates the name caller doesn’t accept the part of themselves that’s weak and plays the victim. The way I see it, the name caller’s also playing the victim here by blaming SJW’s for the name caller’s hate of them.
That SJW’s just want to feel important without putting in any real work. Here the name caller likely doesn’t like the part of themselves that wants the glory, or even thinks they deserve the glory, without putting in the effort. And what is a name caller doing when they call someone an SJW? Not putting in real work, and they may feel important if they feel they’ve lessened the effect of the SJW.

If you recognize any of these kinds of hate in yourself, that’s great. Yes, it’s great because it’s the first step in seeing that the hate comes from inside you, it’s not that someone’s actions are somehow deserving of hate.

By the way, to help me fill out this list, I read some Quora posts and watched a video titled “5 reasons people hate social justice warriors (SJW’s).” I did get some ideas from this video, but I want to point out that it’s fundamentally different from what I’m saying here in that it seems to imply that hate of social justice warriors is somehow justified, while my main point is that hate is basically never justified, even if, sometimes, I know, it just so totally feels like it is, doesn’t it? Whoopsies, it’s not – at least not in my opinion.

Oct. 28, 2021:

What is civil discourse and how is it different from honorable discourse?

I define honorable discourse as discourse, or conversation, that ultimately supports love and value building over hate and value destruction.

As for a definition of civil discourse, I couldn’t find anything on it, or a related term, civic discourse on merriam-webster.com, or dictionary.com. So I did some wikipedia’ing and Googling, and here’s some of what I found: American University, Kansas State University, academic publisher IGI Global, and learningforjustice.org.

Taking these difference references’ input into consideration, here’s my attempt to define civil discourse so I can compare it with honorable discourse.

Civil discourse is discourse, or conversation, that considers different viewpoints to increase understanding, and involves all parties being respectful of all other parties in the discussion, including any parties who aren’t present.

Further, civil discourse involves minimizing interrupting, sharing speaking and listening, discussing ideas and not personhoods, offering support for one’s claims, considering other viewpoints rather than being immediately dismissive of them, and not trying to make oneself look better than the other person or persons.

With definitions of civil discourse and honorable discourse in hand, honorable discourse again being discourse that ultimately supports love and value building, what are the differences between the two terms, if any? Well, I believe increasing understanding is a part of value building, and respect for others is part of love. Therefore, I believe true civil discourse is actually a subset of honorable discourse. This would mean that anything that’s civil discourse is also honorable discourse, but that some things that are considered honorable discourse fall outside of being characterized as civil discourse. An example might be two guys bonding over how great their favorite football team is without insulting any other teams – this would be an honorable discourse with value being built in the connection between the two guys, but I don’t think it would qualify as a “civil discourse” because there’s no disagreement and it’s not really meant to increase understanding. At least, that’s how I see it.

Why is civil/honorable discourse important?

Some of these ideas come from an article out of the Charles Koch Institute titled “Why is Civil Discourse Important?”

so people can stay friends and get along well with each other – how many friends have you lost due to political disagreements?
so progress can be made in areas where there’s agreement, by better knowing what those areas are,
to be able to discuss a wider range of ideas and therefore come up with more innovative solutions to issues – sometimes ideas that seem crazy contain some good aspects, and
so people who may want to harm us have less chance to exploit our weaknesses and divide us.

This last one is relevant to alleged campaigns by foreign actors on social media to sow discord in American political discussion.

What you could focus on to help you speak more civilly/honorably with people you disagree with

I believe one of the reasons it’s so difficult to get civil/honorable discourse to be truly widespread is how good it feels to be “right” and “win” in conversation. So to avoid focusing on being right and winning, here are some alternate things to focus on during conversations in which there’s some disagreement:

better understanding the other party’s values, some of which you may not have considered and could explain why you think they’re “wrong,” that is, because their values are different from yours,
being curious about finding areas where you may actually agree,
learning what strategies work and which ones don’t in trying to convince someone of your viewpoint, without bashing them over the head with it,
appreciating the simple joy of interacting with another human, and
trying to help the other person think more critically, regardless of the outcome of their thinking.

Oct. 24, 2021:

How to go from social justice warrior (SJW) to true justice lover

“Social justice warrior” is a term that, in my opinion, is typically used with some hate behind it, but I believe it’s also generally indicative of some hate present in the recipient of the term. I differentiate between social justice warrior and true justice lover as follows – I define a social justice warrior as someone who’s at least in part motivated by hate of injustice to apparently support justice, while a true justice lover is motivated overwhelmingly by love to support true, not just apparent, justice. To figure out if you may be in denial about doing things out of hate of injustice, check out my recent blog on “how to know if you’re doing something out of hate or love.” What then are some things you can do, if you want to, to start to shift yourself away from hating injustice to loving justice, or what I’d call going from a social justice warrior to a true justice lover?

Come to love white supremacists – basically, don’t hate the haters
In general, don’t call anyone a racist, a sexist, a bigot, etc. – it assumes bad intent and/or bad beliefs, and we can never know those things for sure
Don’t be too quick to judge – try others on and build your capacity to feel empathy, the source of love
Support your positions regarding injustices with well-reasoned/well-thought out arguments
Support free speech, letting even those you adamantly disagree with have their say – then refute their arguments with well-thought out ones of your own – don’t resort to name calling or ad hominem attacks (attacks on someone’s personhood)
Watch yourself for use of any punishing words or tone to your words. Try to inspire others to be better rather than punish them out of the way
When you find yourself hating injustice, try to shift your focus to loving justice instead
Speak honorably – I define speaking honorably as speaking in a way that ultimately supports love and value building over hate and value destruction, which, to me, sounds like something a true justice lover would want to do. Read my blog on 10 things you can do to make your speech more honorable for some ideas on how to do this

I hope this list of suggestions may help you in some small way to become more of a lover of justice than a hater of injustice.

Oct. 19, 2021:

10 ways to help reduce the influence of online negativity

Don’t respond to negative comments. Responding to negative comments can make them more likely to get noticed and give them more influence. On many social media sites, you can block users, report users for policy violations, and/or delete negative comments.
If you choose to respond to negative comments, don’t respond to negativity with negativity. Stated another way: don’t hate on the haters.
If you feel it’s best to respond to a negative comment, try a private message, when possible  this is especially good if you know the person in real life, and you express some genuine care for how they’re doing while at the same time addressing their comment. Their negative comment is likely an indication they could use some caring.
In responding to negative comments, both privately and publicly, don’t focus on proving the other person wrong or bad. Instead, try to inspire them to think critically – such as with questions rather than statements – in the hopes that that may help them see past some of their prejudices. “Loosening up” their take on things might be the best you can do. Also, realize that people who post negative things are hurting themselves by spending their time being fearful and hateful rather than curious and joyful. For a person who’s already hurting themselves, do you want to hurt them more, or do you want to try to make their life better?
Use humor to deflect and defuse negative comments. Humor can be a great interrupt for a pattern of anger, and can help blow off charge. You may want to be careful with this, though, as humor can sometimes be taken the wrong way, especially by people who don’t know you. One example of using humor to try to defuse things could be if two of your friends are arguing back and forth on Facebook about politics, you could write something like, “You guys could argue this all day, but it’s clear to me that the only way to settle this once and for all is with a Nerf foam gun duel. I propose high noon tomorrow. Safety glasses on, of course.”
Post positive or at least neutral comments to dilute and lessen the effects of negative ones. Especially if the most recent comment is negative, write something positive and sincere so others see that first. It doesn’t have to be something to try to negate the negative comment. If it is, in a way you’re giving an indirect response to the person who posted the negative comment, which may seem like a sort of reward to them – they got attention. Instead, any type of positive comment or neutral comment or question should do.
Leave a “suggested more honorable version” of the person’s comment. This is similar to a process called “Steel Manning” in which you try to create the strongest version of another person’s argument before arguing against that version. In this case, though, you don’t argue against it. I’ve done this in limited trials on my YouTube channel – where, for instance, a video called “5 reasons to speak honorably about Trump (even if you hate him)” got a number of negative comments. For examples of how to write suggested more honorable versions, look at those YouTube comments and/or through some of the suggested more honorable versions of politicians’ speech I provide on my website. Some things to look for and remove or modify are name calling, insults, mocking, being disrespectful, offering opinion as fact, assuming bad intent, providing misleading or inaccurate information, and promoting hate or violence.
If you respond to someone’s negative comment with something truly constructive that’s meant to be helpful and they still come back with more negativity, it’s likely best to disengage – the more responses a comment gets, the more attention it’s likely to get, so at some point you’re helping to amplify it. And, if no one reacted to negative comments, many people would probably stop leaving them.
Reduce negativity in yourself – I believe we’re always teaching others with our behaviors, so lead by example. Also, the less anger you have, the less likely you are to be reactive to someone’s online post or comment, and the less likely you’ll be to post something even subtly negative in response to it. One online course I like for reducing anger is on Udemy.com: Anger Management Techniques That Actually Work – it has a “perception management worksheet” in Section 5, video 18, that I think can be quite helpful if you use it regularly. The website personalexcellence.com also has some interesting techniques for removing anger from your life. And there are a number of books out there on the subject – while not specifically focused on anger, I like “Happiness Is a Choice” and other books by Barry Neil Kaufman as a way to reduce anger by choosing happiness.
Don’t click on negative clickbait, read negative mainstream media articles, or watch online videos of personalities who’ve built up a good part of their following by saying negative things, such as about the other side of the political spectrum from them. Some examples of headlines that may sound interesting, but are best to not click on if you want to avoid supporting negativity, are, from May 25, 2021 on foxnews.com: “Time to Fire Fauci: Lawmakers have grown tired of doctor’s COVID flip-flops,” and a May 26, 2021 opinion piece on wapo.com (The Washington Post): “Rarely has the GOP fixation on race shown all its ugly facets like this.” When you click on articles like these, you’re supporting them and more articles like them. And negativity on social media often feeds off of negativity in the mainstream media, and vice versa.

For more, check out the YouTube video on this.

Oct. 13, 2021:

How to know if you’re doing something out of hate or love

Have you ever said something that you thought in the moment was you supporting something good, but later realized that what you were really going for had little to do with supporting good in the world and more to do with wanting to feel like a good person? Or have you spoken out against an injustice because it finally pissed you off enough to compel you to do so?

I define dishonorable speech as speech that ultimately supports hate over love. But how do you know when you’re doing or saying something more out of hate than love? Here are some things to ask yourself to try to figure that out:

Are you going for any of the things on my list of 10 common reasons people speak dishonorably? They are:

- to try to feel or prove you’re right, smart, interesting or good
- to try to get something in the external world such as financial gain
- to connect with others through negative bonding
- to try to build value, but in a confused way, thinking the ends justify the means
- to get to be the hero
- to feel excitement, as by stirring things up
- to try to get revenge
- to try to avoid feeling scared or vulnerable
- to feel powerful
- you’re being mindless.

If any of those apply significantly, you may be supporting hate more than love. In addition, here are some other questions to ask yourself:

Are you worried about what others think in terms of how they may be judging you?
Do you see anyone as a “bad person” rather than a person who’s done bad actions?
Is what you’re saying or doing primarily motivated by things you’re angry about rather than an actual concern for justice?
Is what you’re saying or doing primarily motivated by running away from some fear?
Are you more concerned with feeling better about yourself for having “fought the good fight” than evaluating if you really are fighting the good fight?
In line with that, do you just accept what others say are good or bad things without thinking things through for yourself to determine what you believe to be good or bad?
Are you emotionally cutoff from feeling empathy for any of the parties involved?
Are you enjoying laughing at others at their expense, such as for being stupid, or in some other way “less than” you?
Do you think someone really doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt and feel absolutely certain your take on things is correct?
Are you misrepresenting reality to make yourself look better somehow?
Are you looking for someone or something to blame rather than actively searching out your share of responsibility for something?
Are you more worried about being right and having other people accept that than knowing the actual truth?
Do you think of yourself as a victim or are you always looking for who’s the victim and who’s the victimizer in any situation so you can blame the victimizer?

If you find yourself having significant feelings of apathy, fear, anger, and/or hate when you say something, and you don’t have a strong commitment to speaking honorably that can help temper the urges that often come with these feelings, you’re most likely supporting hate with your words and speaking dishonorably on some level. If you find yourself having significant feelings of care, gratitude, calm resolve to do what’s right, and/or love when you say something, you’re more likely to speak honorably and be supporting love with your words. I know for me I have to keep checking that I’m not just making up some story for myself to do the more comfortable thing rather than the right thing. So I hope some of these questions can help others out there struggling with something similar.

For more, check out the YouTube video on this.

Oct. 4, 2021:

Speaking honorably is speaking kindly

In my opinion, if you’re speaking honorably, you’re speaking with kindness. And kindness is important to me, as hopefully it is to you.

But what do I mean by kindness, do I just mean being “nice”? No. There’s a meme attributed to https://kindnessgrowshere.com/ that differentiates between nice and kind as follows:

Nice:

Never want to rock the boat
Most concerned with not upsetting someone
Afraid to speak up when they witness unkind behavior
Worried about being liked

Kind:

Willing to make waves
Most concerned with doing what is right
Willing to speak up and take a stand
Worried about being kind

I would add that nice is concerned with raising one’s reputation up, while kind is concerned with raising others up.

Merriam-webster.com defines kind as “of a sympathetic or helpful nature,” which I think is consistent with this. I define honorable speech as speech that ultimately supports love and value building in the world, and part of this, in my opinion, is supporting being sympathetic and helpful.

Looking back at the meme, honorable speech, just like being kind, is willing to make waves if it builds value in the world, it’s focused on doing what’s right, it’s willing to speak up and take a stand to support love, and it’s concerned about being kind with one’s words.

If you want to learn how to be more honorable and thus kind with your words, check out my videos on 10 ways to speak more honorably, and my 37 categories of dishonorable speech, or types of speech to generally avoid when speaking from a place of kindness.

For more, check out the YouTube video on this.

Aug. 18, 2021:

How does speaking honorably uphold the building of value in the world?

I believe there are many ways that speaking honorably upholds value building in the world, including these 20:

By my definition of honorable speech, it promotes love, and love has value in itself, in my opinion.
It promotes critical thinking over fear- and anger- based decision making. We’re more likely to build value in the world when, before we act, we think critically about what’ll most likely build value in the world.
It leaves more options open for people to create value, such as by not unjustly destroying their reputations.
It tends to promote less physically risky behavior which can destroy life and health, because it generally tries to present reality as accurately as possible, including levels of physical risk.
It promotes taking responsibility over excuse-making, blaming and having a victim mentality – this generally helps people be more effective at bringing about what they want in the world, and I believe most people want good things in the world.
It encourages people to be stronger rather than weaker, and thus more capable of building value.
It inspires people to be more resourceful and consider more options to make things happen.
It promotes people putting in effort, and pulling their own weight rather than leeching off others, meaning more people are likely to be contributing to building value in the world. Speaking honorably involves choosing one’s words carefully and thus is in and of itself a practice in putting in more effort.
It promotes integrity and generally with that honesty, and not stealing, cheating, or being violent. I believe being non-violent with your words promotes being non-violent physically as well.
It promotes true justice, such as by promoting honesty and upholding the principle of innocent until proven guilty. True justice has value in and of itself, in my opinion, and promotes other value building in the world.
It provides more room for people to grow and try things to build more value by generally decreasing their fears of ridicule for their failures.
It helps people more clearly see how they can build value by accurately representing the true hierarchy of value.
It promotes people building rather than destroying their consciences, thus keeping them better on track for building value by doing what’s good and right.
It limits distractions from real value building.
It can help to promote and raise others up who you think are doing good in the world, so that they may be able to do even more good.
It generally doesn’t incentivize bad action, or action that destroys value.
It generally avoids introducing negative thoughts to people about others – which can be destructive and whose effects can never be fully erased.
It promotes empathy, kindness and understanding, such as by giving people the benefit of the doubt and leaving room for them to better themselves, and by avoiding errors in thought such as logical fallacies and jumping to conclusions. Speaking honorably also involves trying on your audience and how they may react to your words, which can help build empathy.
It builds community, with people bonding through shared positive experiences rather than through negative bonding. Feeling as though you’re part of a community of good, kind people adds value to your life, doesn’t it?
It teaches and inspires others to speak more honorably and thus build more value.

I should mention that one fundamental assumption I have behind this list is that most people are good people, meaning they want to do good in the world. Those are the kind of people I want to have more options to do good. I have a blog post below on 11 reasons to speak honorably, so check that out for a few additional reasons I think it’s good to speak honorably. In my opinion, speaking honorably is one of the best everyday things you can do to build value in the world, or, said another way, make the world a better place to live.

Aug. 17, 2021:

Update to my definition of "value"

Today I updated my definition of “value” and thus “honorable speech” and “dishonorable speech.” My new definition of value, with some added explanation, is:

Value is defined here as how useful something ultimately is to people in supporting and promoting life, supporting people’s individual rights to their own lives and the products of their efforts, and in gaining “positive” experiences. Note that “positive” can have objective aspects, such as helping to avoid death, or be subjective, such as the positive experience you get from a keepsake that means something to you, but not someone else. “Ultimately” means taking into account the “sum total” of something’s usefulness, over the long-term, such as including possible trade-offs between some people’s positive experiences and an individual’s right to their own life and products of their efforts.

This new, and I believe, more complete definition of value now includes usefulness in supporting people’s individual rights to their own lives and the products of their efforts, which includes their wealth. I think this addition to my definition is actually super important because, in my opinion, the rights of the individual are foundational to value-building in the world. In other words, if we do not hold very high esteem for people’s individual rights to their own lives and the products of their efforts, then, in general, I believe far less value will be built in the world. Why do I think that? Well, if we violate an individual’s rights, I believe part of us knows we’re doing it and feels it in our conscience to some degree, thus giving us a less positive overall experience. Even if we’re not the ones directly doing the rights violation, I think if we see it and don’t do something about it, we feel it in our conscience. This is even if we make up some story to justify the rights violation or why it makes sense to not do anything about it, and try to clear our conscience using this made up story. Also, when we violate someone’s rights, we realize more fully that people are capable of doing that because we just did it. This can mean less positive experiences of life for us because we’ll generally have more fear that something similar could be done to us. In addition, if we don’t respect individuals’ rights, we inspire other people to do the same, so others are less likely to respect our rights. And finally, I believe It’d probably feel much more obvious that value was being destroyed if your own personal individual rights were the ones being violated.

July 6, 2021:

7 possible misconceptions about speaking honorably

I don’t get the impression that a lot of people talk about or hear much about speaking honorably these days. I recently did a Google Scholar search for civil discourse, which I think is more commonly talked about, and it came up with about 2.7 million results, while a search for honorable speech came up with about 0.2 million, or about 14 times fewer results. For this reason, I believe there are likely some misconceptions about what honorable speaking is and isn’t, and why it matters. So I came up with 7 possible misconceptions people may have about speaking honorably, and here they are:

Speaking with honor is from a past era of medieval knights; it’s not relevant today – the way I define honorable speaking is speaking in a way that supports love or value building over hate or value destruction. So I’d say that if you think love and hate are relevant today, then so is speaking honorably.
It’s not that big of a deal – again, if we go back to my definition, do you think it’s not a big deal to support love over hate? Would you think it’s not a big deal if you or someone you loved was the subject of dishonorable speech that had real negative consequences on your or their lives such as loss of jobs or freedom? Would you think it’s not a big deal if you saw how dishonorable speech could contribute to real-life violence such as mass shootings and war?
It’s boring. Where’s the fun if there’s no drama? It’s true that speaking honorably, that is, without name calling, insults and other dishonorable speech, is likely to seem less dramatic. That doesn’t mean it’s boring. I believe that you control whether it’s boring for you or not, and that if you want to choose to make it a fun game to always speak honorably or determine for yourself if others are speaking honorably, you could do that.
It’s devoid of humor – speaking honorably can including plenty of jokes and humor, as long as they’re appropriate to the situation and not funny in a mean-spirited way. I’m working on a future blog on the dishonor in certain kinds of jokes and humor – I’ll go into it more there, but for now I’ll say that if you stick with Dad jokes, it’s a pretty safe bet that your humor will be honorable.
It’s speaking in a way that nobody gets upset about, or at least the vast majority of people don’t get upset about – we can’t control if people are going to get upset or not by what we say. While I think audience reaction is a consideration in speaking honorably, there may actually be situations in which a lot of people get upset when someone speaks honorably. One such situation could be when someone defends the constitutional rights to a fair trial of a person who has allegedly done terrible things.
Speaking honorably is never saying anything negative – Speaking honorably doesn’t mean always sugar-coating things. By my definition, speaking honorably involves supporting love, and this sometimes requires drawing attention to negative things. One example might be when someone does something destructive and you compassionately try to call their attention to the destruction, encourage them to fix it if possible, and help them choose a better path in the future. For more on this, check out my blog post on 4 situations in which it may be honorable to say negative things.
It’s too much work – it may seem like a lot of work at first to speak more honorably, to think before you speak, choose your words carefully, and not say some of the dishonorable things that you so want to say, but it should generally become easier with practice, and it’s really only “too much work” if you don’t think it’s a big enough deal to justify the effort. Is supporting love really too much work?

I hope this list helped address some possible misconceptions about honorable speech – what it is and isn’t. To me, it is relevant these days, it is a big deal, it’s not boring or devoid of humor or speaking in way in which no one gets upset, it can involve saying negative things, and I don’t believe it’s too much work, especially not to support love over hate.

July 5, 2021:

5 reasons to call out dishonorable speech on your side and 3 reasons not to

In my opinion, there are many areas in which some people choose sides and don’t seem to want to hear anything against their side even if it’s the truth. These include Republicans versus Democrats, Jewish Israelis versus Palestinians, pro-life versus pro-choice abortion activists, and even your favorite sports team versus its hated rival. Be honest, how many times have you been OK with a bad call as long as it was in favor of your team? I’m here with 5 reasons you may want to call out dishonorable speech on your side, and 3 reasons you may not want to. When I say “call out,” I just want to be clear that that doesn’t mean punish, it means identify and condemn the speech, not the person.

Here are 5 possible reasons to call out dishonorable speech on your side of an issue:

It’s the right thing to do, and you’ll likely feel better about yourself for standing up for what’s right against discomfort or other adversity.
It helps your side maintain the moral high ground – If you don’t call out dishonorable speech on your side, you lose the moral high ground. This could especially be an issue if part of your side involves having a claim to the moral high ground.
It may inspire people on the other side of the issue to call out dishonorable speech on their side – I think it is inspiring when you see someone do the right thing, especially against adversity. If both sides are calling out the dishonorable speakers on their respective sides, then you should have a more level playing field.
It may inspire the dishonorable speaker(s) on your side and their followers or potential followers to choose a more honorable path. If someone’s speaking dishonorably and no one challenges them, they may be more likely to continue, and more people may follow them.
It avoids propagating a “win at all costs” mentality with all its associated damages – If you don’t call out dishonorable speech on your side, you’re in a way propagating a “win at all costs” mentality (into future situations and people), with all the damages associated with that.

There are also reasons you may not want to call out dishonorable speech on your side. 3 risks of doing this are:

The dishonorable speaker(s) on your side may target you with dishonorable speech, which can lead for you to loss of influence, financial losses, or worse.
Some people on your side may see you as not a team player or even as a back-stabber. Again, this could lead to loss of influence, etc.
Your side of the issue may be more likely to lose, at least in the short-term. If you stay the honorable, moral high ground path, though, I believe you generally have the best long-term chance of winning, especially if you define “winning” as ultimately supporting justice.

Those were 5 reasons you may want to call out dishonor on your side and 3 reasons you may not want to. You’ll have to decide for yourself if the benefits outweigh the disadvantages in your specific case, but I hope you’ll seriously consider that they might.

July 2, 2021:

10 things you can do to make your speech more honorable

So you like the idea of speaking honorably, which, by my definition, is in a way that ultimately supports love over hate, and now you’re thinking, “OK, but how do I go about doing that?” Below are ten things you can do to, in my opinion, make your speech more honorable. To illustrate these things, I’ve included with each one examples of honorable and dishonorable ways to talk about former U.S. President Donald Trump:

1. Acknowledge opinion as opinion – when you do this it leaves more room for people to think critically and form their own opinions. Use words such as “in my opinion,” “I believe,” “I think,” and “in my view.”

For example, “Trump was the worst president ever,” is dishonorable at least in part because it doesn’t identify that this is an opinion. A more honorable version might be: “I think Trump was the worst president ever.” Similarly, if you said Trump was the best president ever, a more honorable version might be, “I think Trump was the best president ever.”

2. Focus on actions, not personhoods, that is, avoid personal attacks such as name calling and insults, and focus on the issues such as on destructive actions.

Along these lines, something dishonorable to say about Trump may be: “Trump was such an unfeeling bleep on immigration.” A more honorable version may be: “I didn’t agree with Trump’s immigration policies,” and then go into the specifics of what you didn’t agree with and why.

3. Avoid blaming others, especially for how you feel.

Here a dishonorable thing to say may be: “Trump just made me so angry.” A more honorable version could be: “I didn’t like Trump’s policies, but even if I didn’t vote for him, I know in some sense he’s a reflection of the American people, and we all bear responsibility for him getting elected.”

4. Avoid promoting anger and hate – try to figure out how to say something that gets your message across, but ultimately promotes love.

An example of dishonorable speech is: “Trump was destroying this country, we all should be outraged, and someone should really do something about it!” A more honorable version might be: “I think Trump’s policies were ultimately bad for America.”

5. Give other people the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge you could be wrong.

Here a dishonorable thing to say could be: “Trump’s a racist.” This includes an assumption of his intent and doesn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. A more honorable version may be: “To my eyes, Trump has seemed to use some people’s racist leanings as a means to his political goals.”

6. Be honest.

A dishonorable thing to say could be: “Did you know that Trump’s IQ is only a hundred?,” A more honorable version might be: “I don’t know what Trump’s exact IQ is.”

7. Try to be accurate and precise in your representation of reality – look into common logical fallacies and try to avoid them. Also make sure you have your facts right, and if you aren’t sure, say so, such as, “I could be remembering this wrong, but I’m fairly sure that…”

Something that is dishonorable to say because it includes logical fallacies might be: “Trump doesn’t respect anyone.” (This could be considered a hasty generalization, and also a mind-reader fallacy since you can’t read Trump’s mind to know who he actually respects or not, regardless of what he says.) A more honorable version may be: “Trump speaks about a number of people in a way I’d call disrespectful.”

8. Be respectful – This involves minimizing your interruptions of other people speaking, acknowledging when someone has spoken, and not being condescending or saying demeaning things.

A dishonorable example might be to say, “The orange blob running our country.” A more honorable version may be simply to refer to him as, “President Trump.”

9. Avoid irrelevant information, or gossip – ask yourself why you’re saying it and does it need to be said.

One issue with using as examples speaking about Donald Trump is that it seems to me that people think there is no irrelevant information when it comes to presidents and other politicians. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe someone loses all right to past, present and future privacy when they are elected to public office. Here a dishonorable example may be: “I wonder how many women Trump has had sex with in his life.” It’d be more honorable to just not bring up Trump’s sex life, in my opinion.

10. Don’t repeat others’ dishonorable speech.

Something dishonorable to say may be: Did you hear what Trump said about such-and-such Democrat? He called them a…” In this case the more honorable version, in my opinion, would be to simply not mention what Trump said about such-and-such Democrat.

Those were 10 things you can do to speak more honorably, and not just about Donald Trump, but about lots of people and things. I hope they help, and good luck to you in your journey to speak more honorably.

July 1, 2021:

When is it honorable to say negative things?

In my opinion, speaking with honor doesn’t mean always saying positive things. Honorable speech tends to not be negative, but it can be when negative words are most supporting of love. That’s in accordance with my definition of honorable speech as speech that ultimately supports love or value building over hate or value destruction. Here are some examples of situations in which I believe it may be honorable to say negative things about someone’s actions and/or attributes (although whether it’s really honorable will still depend exactly on how you say things):

Testifying in a court case or answering questions by authorities in an investigation, as long as it’s not an investigation with a hidden agenda, such as a political one.
When the person asks you for honest feedback about themselves. Examples of when this might be the case are when you’re a judge in a competition that people voluntarily participate in, or you’re a teacher, or a doctor, or just a friend of someone who wants “brutally” honest feedback.
When you’re trying to help someone see the damages of their actions, to help them choose a different path in the future – such as when talking to kids.
When there’s an imminent danger, such as of death or serious injury – I think the bar should be set pretty high on this one – meaning I believe the imminent danger risk has to be quite high to justify the damage of saying negative things, especially if those things would normally be considered dishonorable speech.

June 30, 2021:

9 possible damages of offering opinion as fact

In my opinion, politicians and the media often offer opinion as fact. So what? Are the damages of this really a big deal? I believe they can be, and I’ll go through 9 damages I see from offering opinion as fact.

But first, what’s the difference between opinions and facts? According to merriam-webster.com, an opinion is “a view, judgement, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter,” while a fact is “a piece of information presented as having objective reality.” Also, according to the Student Learning Center at Palm Beach State: “a fact is a statement that can be verified. It can be proven true or false through objective evidence. An opinion is a statement that expresses a feeling, an attitude, a value judgement, or a belief. It is a statement that is neither true nor false. Or it may feel true for some, but false for others.”

I believe separating fact from opinion can sometimes be more difficult than it sounds. For example, some opinions that color how we interpret facts can be subtly introduced, such as by a single word in an otherwise factual sentence. For instance, “Trump tweeted, ‘I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!’” is a fact. Changing one word introduces opinion: “Trump fumed, ‘I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!’” Was that really Trump fuming, or expressing a lot of anger? It could’ve been, but it’s a judgement call, or opinion, as to whether it was. As a listener and a reader, then, be on the lookout for even single words that can slip some opinion into what otherwise would be factual statements.

With the above definitions of fact and opinion in mind, and some idea of the difficulties in separating them, here’s a list of 9 damages I believe can result from offering opinion as fact:

People may trust you less because of it. This is because offering opinion as fact misleads by misrepresenting reality. It’s misrepresenting opinion to be something it’s not.
When politicians and the media offer opinion as fact, it adds to cynicism about politicians and the media. How nice would it be if politicians spoke honorably and we weren’t cynical about them? And how great would it be if we felt we could trust the media to present the facts without coloring them with their own opinions?
When opinion is offered as fact, it limits people’s abilities to make the most well-informed, reality-based decisions – they may accept the opinion as fact and not question it, but even if they don’t, it takes extra time and effort to sort the opinion from the fact, thus taking away from time and effort the person could be putting into considering other factors to make their best decision in a given situation.
It promotes fear and anger-based rather than critical thinking-based decision-making, which limits people’s options for making the best decisions for them. When someone presents opinion as fact, I believe sometimes they may just be being lazy or mindless – not wanting to put in the extra effort it takes to identify one’s opinion. More often, though, I think there’s some anger or fear behind the opinion. And when they spread fear and anger as if it were fact, it may make others more likely to let this fear and anger affect their decision making, which I don’t believe is generally a good thing.
It leaves less room for people to form and advocate for their own opinions. When you offer opinion as fact, it’s kind of like saying your opinion is so right it’s unquestionable. But a wider range of opinions could, in theory, lead to healthier debate, which could in turn lead to better outcomes. And what if you’re wrong? Wouldn’t you want someone to challenge your opinion so bad things don’t happen on account of you being wrong? What if you’re wrong about someone’s guilt or innocence, or the likelihood of a disease spreading and people dying, for instance? Your words can have real consequences on people’s lives. When you say, “In my opinion” or “I believe,” it acknowledges that there’s some doubt that what you’re saying is absolutely right, or somehow right for everyone.
It’s disrespectful – it’s kind of like saying, “you can’t think for yourself, so I’ll do it for you.” Even if you believe your cognitive abilities to be far superior to others’, don’t you think there’s room for people to improve, and wouldn’t you want to help them develop their critical thinking skills? It seems to me like it would be more likely to lead to the most long-term value building in the world.

It promotes people being less able to discern opinion from fact because these two are presented as the same thing, on equal footing. According to a 2017 survey, whose results are on statista.com, 25% of people said they had ever argued facts in a malicious way online – and the same percentage said they had argued opinions maliciously – is this because they knowingly argued both facts and opinions, or because some of them aren’t sure what the difference is? If people are less able to discern opinion from fact, they may be more likely to treat the two the same. So, for instance, in the same way they don’t agree with your opinions, they don’t have to agree with your facts, right? I mean, you didn’t differentiate between the two, so…

It can be more difficult to defend against opinion presented as fact. This might seem nice if you’re arguing for your side, but what if it’s used against you? Opinions can’t be defended against in the same way as facts, meaning they can’t be proven false. So if you say, for instance, that Trump “fumed” when he tweeted he won, all I can do is say that’s your opinion and it’s not provable as true or false. Whereas if you said Trump “tweeted” that he lost, I’d be able to provide evidence, through the original tweet, that that fact was false.
It goes against one’s conscience because it, in a way, is dishonest and cheating to try to get what you want in a conversation. This gets back to #1 on this list of people trusting you less. You’re also likely to trust yourself less, especially to act in a way that’s ultimately in line with your conscience.

Those are 9 types of damages I believe can occur when people offer opinion as fact. Even though presenting opinion as fact may seem, on the surface, to be a minor thing, I believe in certain cases it can cause significant damage, especially when it’s amplified over the internet. To avoid the risk of damage, I suggest saying, “in my opinion,” “I believe,” “I think,” or a number of other possible phrases whenever you’re expressing your opinion.

June 1, 2021:

11 reasons you may want to speak honorably

(Note: I define speaking honorably as speaking in a way that ultimately supports love over hate)

You’ll likely feel better about yourself – it may seem easier in the moment to go with the flow and speak dishonorably, such as to negatively bond with someone, but it’ll likely feel better after the fact to know that instead of going with the flow, you acted in a way that you felt was right. In my experience, there’s a certain solid feeling that comes with having a clear conscience.
It builds your character, or your ability to go against what your body wants to do, and instead do what you want to do, which, I think for most people, is the right thing. It’s not easy always speaking honorably. Sometimes you’re angry and you want to lash out, or you really want to prove you’re right, or you just don’t want to deal with the discomfort that comes from acknowledging your part of the responsibility for something bad happening, and instead want to put all the blame on others. I know I personally don’t succeed at speaking honorably 100% of the time – I have my own fears and laziness – but I keep trying, and I know that when I do, I’m becoming a stronger person.
It gets you more comfortable with feeling vulnerable, which can help you push through emotional discomfort to make progress in others areas of your life. This is a type of emotional character building. For instance, there can be a certain vulnerable feeling with not going with the crowd, or the flow as I mentioned before. You might have friends who like to gossip, and it’s likely gonna feel weird and shaky at first to not join in, walk away, or even bring up with them that you’re uncomfortable hearing gossip. But if you push into vulnerability once, you can do it again, and again, and I believe that’s where you can make some really great things happen in your life.
It helps you avoid being mindless, on autopilot – to consistently speak honorably, you need to think before you speak and choose your words carefully. I imagine we’ve all had bad things happen because we were mindless. In my opinion, speaking honorably is a sort of inoculation against this. Yes it’s work, but it’s also a practice that can help you avoid autopilot taking you places you don’t want to be.
It can help you avoid destroying value in the world – such as avoid supporting war and violence, avoid bringing down an innocent person you haven’t given the benefit of the doubt to, and avoid promoting hate and prejudice. And yes, I believe even if it’s hate of haters, it’s still promoting hate. It’s still out to destroy rather than build people and things up.
To build value you want to see in the world. Your honorable words can help raise others up who you think are doing good in the world, and help inspire others to think more critically. Your honorable words can also help build value such as more musical groups putting out cool songs in your favorite genre, or humankind getting closer to colonizing Mars. How? In these particular cases, your honorable speech might be that you think aspiring to be a rock star isn’t a silly goal, or that people living on Mars isn’t a total pipe dream and you think it’d be really cool and amazing. I strongly believe your honorable words can help support real value being built in the world and not destroyed.
It might help you see the good in others more – if I’m sitting around insulting people, then I assume everyone else is doing the same. If I speak about people as if they’re human beings with their own struggles, then I at least see the potential for other people to talk in the same way, to rise above insults, and even to truly care about others.
To build stronger, more respectful relationships in which people trust you more. Note that part of speaking honorably involves keeping your word – doing what you say you’re going to do. If people experience you as someone who consistently shows up when you say you will, does what you say you will, and speaks in a way that raises others up, I think it’s going to be hard for them not to respect and trust you more, even if they don’t show it.
To set a good example, such as for your kids – I imagine you want your kids, and other people around you, to feel good about themselves, have strong character, and be respected and trusted by others just as you want that for yourself. I believe we’re always teaching others with our actions, and speaking honorably teaches others to speak honorably, thus raising them up.
It’s heroic to speak honorably – among the ways merriam-webster.com defines “heroic” are “exhibiting or marked by courage and daring” and “supremely noble or self-sacrificing.” I do think it takes courage to speak honorably, especially when no one else around you is, and I also believe it’s noble. Thus, to me, speaking honorably is indeed heroic.
To support love – love of your fellow humans, each with their own individual struggle, doing the best they can to navigate the world.

May 10, 2021 (Edited May 31, 2021):

Guide to @NPelosiHon and @KMcCarthyHon "suggested more honorable version" Twitter accounts:

On Monday, May 10, 2021, I launched two Twitter accounts (@NPelosiHon and @KMcCarthyHon) devoted to providing suggested more honorable versions of tweets by politicians, specifically by Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy. My goal with these accounts is to show how politicians could speak more honorably, not to take political sides. My hope is that these accounts may inspire people both in and out of politics to speak more honorably, i.e., in a way that ultimately supports love over hate, according to my definition of honorable speech. I’m also hoping my tweets won’t be turned into weapons against either Pelosi or McCarthy.

Here’s a guide to how I run these two accounts:

Tweets with no significant dishonorable speech, in my opinion, are simply re-tweeted.
Tweets with some dishonorable speech are first tweeted with a suggested more honorable version, followed immediately by a tweet with a link to the original tweet of @SpeakerPelosi or @GOPLeader. Note: on May 26, 2021, I started adding what I believe were the dishonorable speech issues with the original tweet, in parentheses after providing the link to that tweet.
I deal with the written parts of tweets (no retweets or replies), and I generally leave embedded video/links intact, even if they contain dishonorable speech, or I may leave them off and people can find them in the original tweet from @SpeakerPelosi or @GOPLeader.
“Suggested more honorable version: no tweet” means that it’d be more honorable to not have tweeted the original tweet, in my opinion.
I try to post my suggested more honorable version tweet within 24 hours of the original tweet.
“imo” = in my opinion – I’ll often use this to indicate opinions that may have been originally offered as facts (dishonorable speech category #13).
I sometimes shorten tweets with abbreviations to avoid going over the 280-character single tweet limit, or I’ll write “1/2:” and “2/2:” if my version spans 2 tweets, for instance.
I generally assume Pelosi and McCarthy believe the things they are tweeting, such as when I add an “I believe…” to a tweet.
I may post some YouTube videos explaining the dishonorable speech issues I see in select tweets by Pelosi and McCarthy. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel to help support more honorable speech in the world.

I hope you enjoy these Twitter accounts!

Thanks for reading.

Sean of dishonorablespeechinpolitics.com

P.S. Check out these video explanations of my suggested more honorable versions of 2 McCarthy tweets, and 2 of Pelosi’s.

Apr. 15, 2021:

5 reasons you may want to care that politicians speak more honorably

Most of you are probably aware that many politicians don’t always speak honorably. They may speak dishonorably about their opponents, about various policies, and about the other party. Maybe you’ve just come to accept this as the way of the world and don’t really care. Well, here are 5 reasons why you may want to care that our politicians speak more honorably:

# 1: To have more effective leaders

When politicians in a given race speak badly about each other, it’s interesting to note that one of them is going to get elected. The dishonorable things that were said can erode our trust in them, making them less effective as an elected official and leader. Now, you may think, “I don’t agree with their agenda, why would I want them to be more effective?” Well, here’s the thing: you can still lobby against the parts of their agenda you don’t like in a respectful way. I know sometimes it may be hard to believe from what we tend to hear in the media, but there are things that most Republicans and most Democrats agree on. I know, crazy, right? I’ll put a link in the description to an article from the Program For Public Consultation out of the University of Maryland which talks about what it says are nearly 150 issues on which majorities of Republicans and Democrats agree. So, you may miss out on some of those things that most people seem to agree on if elected leaders have less “political capital” to get things done because of attacks on them.

# 2: Politicians set a widely-seen example for all

Politicians are in the media quite a bit, and they set an example – for you, for kids, for people who are bothered about something and see that it’s “OK” for politicians to talk about it a certain way, so it can feel more OK for them to talk about it that way, too. Wouldn’t it be nice if people treated each other with true respect and dignity, even if they had diametrically opposing views on just about everything else other than treating each other with respect and dignity? What do you think it inspires in all of us when our politicians don’t do that with each other? I talk about some of the damages of dishonorable speech in my 4-part video series on my 37 categories of dishonorable speech. Anything that makes dishonorable speech generally more prevalent is likely to make the damages of it more prevalent as well.

# 3: It’d be nice if politicians felt like good people we could trust

It would be nice to feel good about our politicians as good people we can trust, even if we don’t agree with them, wouldn’t it? Enough said.

# 4: It could lead to fewer distractions from issues, and better policies

It could lead to more rational and focused discussions surrounding the issues, and thus more rational solutions and policy making. How? First, there’d be fewer distractions from actual issues. Second, these days it’s hard to discuss certain policy options without getting attacked for even considering such “crazy” or “bad” things. But sometimes, to get to a better, more rational form of a “mainstream option,” it can help to pull in some aspect of a “crazy” or “bad” option. Bringing up “crazy” options can help us re-question our assumptions, and possibly come to something better in the end. If some political opponent is always there to attack the intent or intellect, or personhood of whoever brought up the “crazy” option, though, it’s much less likely to be brought up. Thus, we lose out on possible improved solutions to the issues that face us. Yup, sometimes you gotta get a little crazy to get more rational.

# 5: It might restore your faith in humanity

What would it be like if you saw Democrats and Republicans treating each other with respect and dignity, being honest, and genuinely seeming to be on the same team to make life better for people, even if they don’t agree on how best to go about doing that? I believe it might just restore some people’s faith in humanity. And I think it can be done if enough people believe it can, and take action to bring it about. One small step towards doing that, I believe, is to write to your political party, and ask them to support more honorable speech by their candidates.

Dec. 6, 2020:

10 common reasons people speak dishonorably

Speaking with dishonor doesn’t make you a bad person, it’s in our human nature, and we’ve all done it. Nevertheless, it does result in real damages, whether you’re aware of them or not. If you’d like to reduce the amount of dishonorable speaking you do, it may be helpful to look at your reasons for speaking dishonorably. To help you identify those, here are 10 common reasons, or what I believe to be common reasons, why people might speak with dishonor.

#1: To try to feel or prove they’re right, smart, interesting, or good – or at least better than someone else – basically, to feel better about themselves.

#2: To try to get something in the external world, such as to win an election (this is likely a significant motivator for dishonorable speech in politics), or to “win” someone’s heart, “win” in the business world, get their way/have someone do what they want, get “off the hook” of responsibility and not “have” to do something, and/or get the adoration/approval of others.

#3: To connect with others, as by “negative bonding.”

#4: In a confused attempt to build value – this is the ends justify the means. Sometimes we say bad things to try to make good things happen – to determine if there’ll be a net building of value, though, I think we have to look at the bigger picture, and consider long-term effects as well as short-term ones.

#5: To get to be the hero; to protect someone else.

#6: To feel excitement, as by “stirring things up.”

#7: To try to get revenge, as for someone’s dishonorable speech about them. When someone speaks dishonorably about us, it can be very tempting to try to get them back by speaking dishonorably about them, but this propagates the cycle of dishonorable speech with its resulting damages.

#8: To try to avoid feeling scared or vulnerable; to feel safe. It’s natural as a human being to want to feel safe. Is there a real physical threat, though, or are you just trying to not feel uncomfortable?

#9: To feel powerful, as by being able to affect or destroy things. It’s quicker and easier to feel powerful by destroying things, but it’s a more fulfilling powerful feeling to put in honest effort and build value in the world.

#10: Because they’re being mindless. Such as sometimes people forget that they promised to keep a secret.

If you want to try to reduce the amount of dishonorable speaking you do, it may be helpful to look at this list and figure out what you’ve gone for in the past when you spoke dishonorably. Keep in mind that it may be multiple things. Then try to become aware of these same sorts of urges in the future and see if you can catch yourself before you act on them. It takes real work to reduce our dishonorable speech, and it may not seem very fun at the time, but from my own experience, I believe you’ll feel better about yourself in the long run if you do.

Nov. 11, 2020:

5 reasons to speak honorably about Donald Trump (even if you hate him)

If you dislike Trump, or even hate him, it may seem like an odd suggestion that you speak honorably about him. So why would you want to? Here are 5 possible reasons:

Because he’s a human being

Trump’s a human being and all human beings deserve to be spoken about honorably, in my opinion. That holds no matter what they’ve done. Why? Because dishonorable speech is, in a way, cheating and stealing options away from someone. Is there anything that someone’s done that makes it OK for you to cheat and steal from them? “But,” you may say, “I’m just trying to ‘steal’ away Trump’s options for doing more bad stuff in the future.” By doing bad stuff to him now? Why not try to use precise, honorable speech towards the same goals, and avoid the collateral damage to yourself and others of dishonorable speech?

Because he’s president

When you speak dishonorably about Trump, you’re not just dishonoring him, you’re dishonoring the office of the president of the United States. If you feel that Trump is dishonoring the office through his actions, speaking about them in a dishonorable way furthers the damage, it doesn’t help it.

Because dishonorable speech inspires more dishonorable speech

When someone speaks dishonorably about you, does it inspire you to be more honorable in your conduct, or does it inspire you to want to “fight back,” even with dishonor? Do you think all the dishonorable speech about Trump inspires him and his supporters to be more honorable in their speech or encourages them to be less?

Because your dishonorable speech hurts you (and others)

When we speak about someone dishonorably, part of us knows we’re doing it, and that it’s bad and destructive. If we have a conscience, this can make us feel bad about ourselves. Also, by speaking dishonorably we’re effectively teaching others that it’s OK, and encouraging them to go against their conscience as well.

Because dishonorable speech about Trump distracts from the issues

When Trump does something you think is bad and you call him names or attack him as a person for it, you’ve taken the focus off of the issue at hand and put it on him. For instance, if you believe Trump’s southern border policies result in inhumane activities taking place, saying, “Trump’s so heartless” distracts from the activities in question. It also makes it more likely you’ll receive resistance from those who may have otherwise listened to and been swayed by your points on the subject.

The next time Trump does or says something you don’t like and you’re tempted to call him names, insult him, or otherwise speak dishonorably about him, I hope something from this list will come back to you. If it does, perhaps you’ll choose to focus on the issues with Trump’s actions rather than on the man himself – because he is a man, he’s human and he’s the U.S. president.

Blog posts:

Ranking actions and words by how much value they destroy

Trump vs. Biden vs. H. Clinton: 3 new dishonorable speech ratings in action

14 kinds of dishonorable speech I believe politicians (too) commonly use

3 new dishonorable speech ratings

The difference between an honorable speech culture and a politically correct one

How to honorably accuse someone of having done something bad

What is personal responsibility? Why is it so important? And what tends to build or destroy it?

What is love (the non-romantic kind)?

The damages of gossip, rumors and conspiracy theories

Why we may or may not believe unsubstantiated accusations against someone

The damages of leveling and value inversion

The damages of blame and excuses

How to speak honorably about people who’ve done or allegedly done bad things

Why speak honorably about people who’ve done or allegedly done bad things

How can we inspire politicians to speak (and act) more honorably?

Some on the Right and the Left use dehumanizing terms: examples and damages

6 Reasons to love people who are driven by hate

Why honor the office of the president?

Framework for determining dishonor in humor

Possible hate behind calling someone a social justice warrior (SJW)

What is civil discourse and how is it different from honorable discourse?

Why is civil/honorable discourse important?

What you could focus on to help you speak more civilly/honorably with people you disagree with

How to go from social justice warrior (SJW) to true justice lover

10 ways to help reduce the influence of online negativity

How to know if you’re doing something out of hate or love

Speaking honorably is speaking kindly

How does speaking honorably uphold the building of value in the world?

Update to my definition of "value"

7 possible misconceptions about speaking honorably

5 reasons to call out dishonorable speech on your side and 3 reasons not to

10 things you can do to make your speech more honorable

When is it honorable to say negative things?

9 possible damages of offering opinion as fact

11 reasons you may want to speak honorably

Guide to @NPelosiHon and @KMcCarthyHon "suggested more honorable version" Twitter accounts:

5 reasons you may want to care that politicians speak more honorably

10 common reasons people speak dishonorably

5 reasons to speak honorably about Donald Trump (even if you hate him)

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