I Care a Lot What People Think

Whether you are virtuous depends on which audiences you are seeking to impress

People will often tell me that they like that I don’t care what others think. But this is not true. If Steven Pinker went to X today and said that I was bad at reasoning and my opinions shouldn’t be taken seriously, I would be hurt and rethink what I was doing in life. Alternatively, if Elon Musk told his 229 million followers that I was a lying pedophile, I would enjoy the attention, find it very entertaining, and feel no insecurity at all.

The difference of course is that I admire Steven Pinker and deeply detest Elon Musk as a human being. Once, I tweeted something about how it was always the ugly women who wanted to force everyone to keep masking for Covid. Claire Lehmann responded with something along the lines of “What is wrong with you?” This made me reconsider whether I should say such things. It wouldn’t have mattered coming from most others. But Claire is smart, honest, and brave. Stunning too. And her opinion about what I’m doing matters, because she is a decent and trustworthy person. So I went back into the Longhouse.