Or, more broadly:
- There is "what happened," and there is "the meaning you assign to what happened," and crucially, _they are not the same thing._
This one lesson underlies virtually every mindfulness and personal development practice in the world.
There is also a funny video you can share with people to explain the same idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-9Gci8MuHw
For example, all lives matter, sounds good, but what is the intent behind that? Is it really to signal that all lives matter?
Alternatively we can look at the effects of an action. To use your example, when someone says “all lives matter” it, among other things, alienates black people. IMO makes it a lot more clear cut.
Also known as Brahman vs Maya:
https://www.yogapedia.com/brahman-and-maya-an-explanation-of...
Unfortunately, since these concepts are presented through a religious lens, Maya renders many people unable to even consider (and therefore falling back to binary heuristic thinking, not realized as such) the valid neuro-scientific concepts contained within.
A simpler, secular version of the same general idea:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
Interestingly, people tend to be very good at identifying lack of wisdom in other people (particularly the members of their outgroups), but are terrible at identifying it in themselves - the classic example is people laughing at the stupidity of Trump supporters, anti-vaxxers, etc.
However, smart people are also very vulnerable to the very same phenomenon, I think it can be seen in this thread (and you'd be hard pressed to find a group that takes thinking more seriously than Rationalists):
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/qz596o/why_...
Another lovely articulation of the same general idea:
Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?
- Frank Herbert
Think of how stupid the average person you know is, and realize that half the population are stupider than that (another mental model I ascribe to).
By maybe 3 years old, humans figure out they can lie about their ignorance of what's generally good or bad to get away with a ton and that will be taken advantage of until some sense of accountability and honor is learned, or there's some significant threat to their personal well-being. A lot of people don't get past that stage until their late teens, but young people don't have much opportunity to do a ton damage with that mindset, they don't tend to have much power. Some people never develop the sense of accountability and go on to test the limits of their feigned ignorance until they find the lines, and walk them as close as possible. As adults, on average, they may not "succeed" as much as "smart" people, but the problem is, people like that are more likely to seek a position that allow them to get away with it, and "smart" people keep letting them off with a look of disappointment, and the assumption that they've "learned from their mistake" and won't do it again, but what they've really learned is they're not as close to the lines as they thought and go a little further next time.
I have only ever heard people say it who were either incredibly naive, or worse, malicious.
I would go so far as to say: "Never ascribe to stupidity what can reasonably be ascribed to malice."
EDIT: perhaps a clearer way of phrasing this would be "If something can reasonably be ascribed to malice, never ascribe it to stupidity"
You consider it malicious to not assume that everyone is out to get you unless proven otherwise?