One problem with empathizing with others’ viewpoints, truly, is realizing a lot of them have downright evil motivations. So, empathizing should make you despise them.

“opposing viewpoints” is too broad a term for the question to be meaningful.

It could mean everything from “Discovery is the best Star Trek series” to “Women aren’t real people”, and the details of the viewpoint in question are EXTREMELY relevant to your ability to empathize with it.

Depends on the viewpoint.

My brother is a conspiracy theorist, it’s absolutely impossible to talk to him about anything. No matter what evidence you produce, he’ll just ignore it.

The closest I got was when he mentioned the moon landings were faked and filmed on a sound stage. He pointed to the flag flapping “in the wind”.

I asked him why, if NASA had gone to all the trouble and expense of faking the moon landings, would they have installed a giant fan to make the flag flap…

I also won’t have anything to do with anyone who supports the likes of Nigel Farage or Tommy Robinson.

Well there is the intolerance paradox. So you have to be mindful of that.

If I’m physically safe, I think between 8 and 10 depending on my energy level. If I’m threatened or hurt in a fight, still up to 8 at least. We can love our enemies and still fight them with all the force necessary (but no more).

I mean I used to have opposite views because I grew up where a lot of that stuff is normalized and I didn’t question it until it was challenged, so I can understand being misinformed, hell I’m still misinformed sometimes. But if they’re not open to having their mind changed, and just want to hurt people, I have very little empathy for that.

I’ll say it’s a 6-9 depending on my mood.

Sure this may sound ridiculous but it’s basic knowledge that studying your opponents viewpoints is the best way to counter them and get new insight yourself.

I don’t think this is necessarily empathy. I’ve read Hitler, Ilyin and Dugin, understood their arguments and point of view. If anything it made me less empathetic to them, seeing their vile hatred spilled on paper like that; but I agree that it is useful in practice to understand people who hate your guts.

To me, empathy means not only understanding the individual’s viewpoint, but moreso understanding how they got to it. This is how I can still slightly emphasize with any awful individuals, from nazis to billionaires: I understand that their viewpoint was formed by their position in the capitalist hellscape we fine ourselves in, and by incessant capitalist propaganda. If I was born in their stead and lived through their experiences, I would likely share similar ideas. This makes me more hopeful in the possibility of reform even for the worst of the worst; if a person was convinced of something, they can be convinced that it is wrong too; noone is born a nazi, and so noone is beyond hope in my opinion.

As for my family, they can be incessantly racist and homophobic, not to mention all the various small things like climate change conspiracies etc. I politely disagree with them and try to nudge them towards more inclusivity and empathy for others; we’ve never had a screaming argument despite holding very different opinions about things so dear to my heart. But yeah at times, especially when I’m in a bad mood, I also just shut down political conversations with them.

The notion of a marketplace of ideas selecting the best ideas and rejecting the worse ones is interesting. It suggests that marketplaces always select for quality, especially the more unregulated they are, which is not something I’ve noticed to be true about how any actual marketplaces operate.

The idea that Nazi “ideas” need to be defeated in open debate, which will cause them to lose power, is also interesting. It presupposes that debates are always won by the most correct idea, which I’ve noticed is often the opposite of how debate works.

It also suggest that the Nazis’ plan is to participate in bloodless debate over their ideas, and accept the outcome if their ideas are rejected, which is not a plan I think Nazis have ever pursued, or the sort of arena in which they have ever admitted—much less accepted—defeat.

It also suggests that what Nazis have are “ideas,” when we know that what they actually have are intentions, and those intentions always create real-life violence toward marginalized communities along racial, ethnic, religious, and other lines of bigotry—and they do so the more effectively Nazis are able to gather and organize and promote their “ideas” into the mainstream.

Source: https://www.the-reframe.com/questions-for-substack/

Also, I find the very definition of your “zero point” as a self-contained bad faith argument. It is quite close to notions of “snowflakes needing safe spaces” or sth, but real life anti-nazi tactics are, and should be, more militant. To this bad-faith zero point my position is either a -10, or on another axis entirely lmao.

I will not listen to or hear out any conservative views. That ship has long sailed.

I won’t go out of my way to defend what I believe, but that doesn’t mean I have to hear your opposing views because I don’t care of what you think.

10 and 1 simultaneously. I’ll sit down. I’ll talk politics with damn near nazis. But I’ll also understand they’re disgusting, their viewpoints are formed through pure idiocy. It can be simultaneously very informing and infuriating to get an understanding of how they come about their viewpoints. Same applies to much less extreme examples as well

I am perfectly happy to discuss opposing viewpoints and potentially even be persuaded. Unless the opposing viewpoint can only be achieved with a complete lack of empathy and by not seeing other groups of people as people. Nothing either of us would say or do would change the other person’s opinion then. I can’t argue someone into believing that other people deserve basic human rights and dignity. They won’t convince me otherwise either.

Nazis are a lost cause

7.5/10. I find that most people I encounter, even if they support causes against those which I support, would agree with my viewpoints, as long as I don’t say “socialism”. That is an unfortunate consequence of being raised in an environment of capitalist realism.

Where’s the other 2.5 points? I’ll happily listen to my opponents recount the life experiences and thought processes that make them oppose my viewpoints. But for my own sanity, I refuse to engage with those who merely throw attacks at me.

I back off from arguing on the internet in general, also for my own sanity.

This depends on whether the other person is willing to do the same. I have a few basic premises which I base my political opinions on, starting with “All humans are of equal value.” If they come to different conclusions from first principles we can agree on, there is an interesting conversation to be had.
If someone has an entirely different set of basic principles, I will have a hard time understanding them, but if they are willing to try to understand mine, I will listen to them as well. I will give no time to someone whose mind is already made up.

Depends on the topic. Entertainment sure, social issues not much all. Politics… if your MAGA I have zero tolerance.