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Can you filter out the bad idea?

I’m reading a book right now that has some objectionable ideas in it. Yet there are thought-provoking insights, too. (The objectionable stuff is along the lines of “the Jews this and the Jews that” followed by “but of course not all of them are bad”).

Can you see and filter out the crap to harvest good ideas? Or is the whole book tainted and to be shunned?

Well, the answer is obvious. “They” are too fragile to be exposed to scary bad people. Burn the book. We would burn the author at the stake, too, but alas that admirable practice was abandoned some hundreds of years ago.

Burning heretics at the stake didn’t work then and it’s not working now.

Being afraid of ideas or people and finding them objectionable is not a reason to flee or shun. Be stronger than that. See and understand your enemy, if indeed this is your enemy.

There is a great deal of value in reading books that you disagree with. There will probably be some insights for you to discover amongst the errors. By reading things that you disagree with you develop your own ability to filter accurate ideas from error. You also learn how to identify error.

This is especially useful if you find someone who starts from the same base premises that you agree with, but then argues to a different conclusion.

Edit: I stopped reading the book half-way through. The good stuff (self-reliance, strength, loyalty, and other values) I can get elsewhere. Too much shit to shovel in order to find the good stuff. I think this book is as much an in-group signaling device as it is an exposition of certain principles. Not so useful if you’re not part of that in-group and you don’t want to be.