Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashasx
I think Peterson would agree though that in retrospect, on a platform designed to be contextless, he shouldn't have tweeted that since it invites these kinds of situations.
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It's true, but it's kind of blaming the victim. There are plenty of public figures now who are frequently plagued by deliberately dishonest interlocutors who look for opportunities to smear them by taking words out of context. This happens to Sam Harris constantly.
There are also plenty of people who are predisposed to want those people discredited, and so will perform a simple google search to find examples of bad things posted around the internet about that person on random ideological websites, like the article posted above. Owing to confirmation bias, people who are most likely to read those smears will generally just accept them at face value and not go looking for any context - they were actively looking for proof that they were right not to like this person, and lo and behold, here it is.
Moreover, such people are unlikely to be moved by clarifications. For one thing, they probably won't even see them, but it's simply a problem of human psychology that it's easier to damage someone's reputation through dishonesty than to repair it.
So yeah, I guess you could say that people like Harris (and Peterson apparently) should be aware of that reality and avoid giving dishonest detractors opportunities to smear them, but that's a pretty sad state of affairs when you have to take active steps to avoid people intentionally and maliciously lying about you.