Avenger Penguin

I was recently asked on Formspring the following question:

What are the worst character traits people can have?

In order both to answer the question tersely and to give my full justification for my choices, I have written this post to which I shall link in my short answer. Herein I shall endeavour to go into full detail why I singled out these particular character traits as the worst.

I'm sure someone is bound to point it out, so I'll explain right away that I've avoided incredibly obvious things such as "murderous intent" that we can all agree is not the best of traits. I have chosen ones that are incredibly common, but I'd rather see much less thereof. Exploding into a cloud of fatal spores in a room full of children would be a worse trait than all of these, but I didn't feel it relevant to include. I hope that's clear.

Willful Ignorance

Everyone has different interests and varying levels of academic strengths, so there's always going to be lots of things people do not know about. However, forming a strong opinion on something and refusing to be further educated on the subject is quite possibly one of the most dangerous attitudes I see around today.

Human beings have evolved to adapt very quickly in terms of understanding and reasoning about their environment. Consequently, we have some troublesome cognitive biases that lead us to 1) test out our ideas by running trials that support it rather than refute it; or 2) try to find ways to distort evidence so that it fits what they already believe. If you only seek evidence that supports what you believe, then you will always succeed. You will not necessarily prove anything.

There isn't usually much time to conduct double-blind trials to assess whether a potential predator will eat you, so this was a good rule of thumb before the dawn of civilisation However, the scientific method has since obsoleted it. Peer review ensures that people are always trying to falsify your claims and -- more importantly -- the default position is to admit "we don't know". When we don't know, we can gather evidence and then ask "what does this evidence tell us?". Explanations pulled out of the air or the mists of time -- anything from wild guesses through to religious scripture -- are intellectually dishonest.

Having to argue against or refute willfully ignorant positions is a tiresome use of time. Scientists are being asked to stand up to defend evolution when there are so many more important debates to be had within the theory. We may as well be demanding physicists come out and defend relativity despite the fact it's not only observed but is in use within GPS devices. Likewise, people are dragged into debating the Christian or Islamic world-view where they deserve little more time than that which is used to dispute Russell's Teapot.

Similar attacks come from people over the issues of climate change. No scientific body has denied the human influence on climate change since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists dropped such a position in 2007. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide why said body did maintain a denialist position for so long in the first place.

However, when presented with this evidence, there are a lot of people that put their proverbial fingers in their ears and maintain their mantra over a supposed "controversy" or "debate", even though every silly argument has been refuted several times. I was taken aback not too long ago by someone claiming that there's "people that disagree" that climate change was caused by humans and didn't seem convinced when I explained that not one of those that disagreed was actually a body researching the matter.

This comes up a lot in non-scientific situations as well. Some will bleat about all the problems the UK has with immigration, but their minds wall off when presented with evidence after evidence that it's not only hardly a problem, but arguably beneficial in many ways.

Overall, I am very unsettled by this trait of being adverse to facts and evidence even to the point where a study showed people are more inclined to believe in psychic powers when told the scientific community say it's bogus. I deeply despair over anyone who throws ideas around without any desire to scrutinise them at all. It's ok to admit you don't know about something, but don't use ignorance as a basis for any arguments.

Right-leaning senses of entitlement, egocentricity and national pride

Sure, it's fun (or so I'm reliably informed) to support your side in sport and I am the first one to defend the UK when people outside it are overly critical. There are things I indeed love about the country, but I also recognise that it's hard to compare honestly to other places when I must have spent 99% of my life here at least. There's nothing wrong with being proud of where you are, but blind, blanket national pride is a self-centred and, frankly, dangerous trait.

I'll be as straight as I can be with this: the country you were born in isn't the best country in the world. People that think this would easily have thought the same about another country had they been born in that one. So, this means that their main criterion for the "best country in the world" is that they were born in it. When you think about that rationalisation, this is actually one of the most arrogant opinions to hold. Similarly, the religious upbringing a person may or may not have is not necessarily correct. Nobody goes to war like the nationalists and the religious.

There's another form of egocentric thinking that leads a lot of irrational people into neoliberal world-views. Mainly, that people can achieve everything they want by themselves and shouldn't have to owe anything to anyone just for being successful. My main objection is this: you aren't necessarily entitled to the money you earn.

Please note that this is in no way saying you are entitled to none of what you earn, but that it doesn't logically follow that you should claim total ownership of all of it.

My salary would be far lower or perhaps not exist if it weren't for the following:

• Economic growth maintained by government (I'm not asserting they are doing the best job, but am contrasting to not having central oversight from the treasury at all).
• My parents for their support.
• Every single teacher who taught me even a basic fact. From literacy, through arithmetic to high-level sciences and humanities, every piece of knowledge I have been given has shaped me academically and socially. Remove any chunk of my education and I think it not a tall order to assume I would not have my current salary.
• My employers for starting and maintaining a environment in which I can work.
• Their teachers and families.
• All the infrastructure that this web of people use daily: roads, trains, subsidised food, etc.
• Anyone in the private sector that provides a service any of these people use: water, electric, etc.
• All the teachers and parents of those people...

The list goes on and forms a web of dependencies such that to say you are where you are entirely off your own back is simply false. You may say you have full control of your destiny and have worked very hard to the point where you can give yourself a lot of credit (and I do have a lot of admiration for these people), but you should not forget they are also standing on the shoulders of giants. Taxation gives back to the society that's supported you.

No man is an island and thus to say you're intrinsically entitled to as much of your salary as possible (i.e. all tax cuts are good) or even to go as far as the Libertarian slogan "Taxation is Theft" is self-centred and irrational. We need to maintain a society wherein people can continue earning good salaries rather than focus on making sure people keep a high proportion of the salary they do earn. If such a society required 90% income tax, I would support it. If such a society required 10% income tax, I would support it. This is the rational position I take and I do not agree at all with the sense of entitlement I see leading people into neoliberal ideals.

Sweeping Apathy

I qualified this with "sweeping" so as to make the clear distinction that I don't expect everyone to care about everything. The fact I get wrapped up in any pursuit or any field of study is my own overly-curious approach to life. However, there is a common trait that feeds from the willful ignorance a little whereby people are dismissive of a whole topic despite its potential to have real impact on their lives.

I hear many people saying they don't like "politics" and don't engage with things like the forthcoming General Election in the UK. That's understandable in some respects; I don't expect people to be passionate about all the different issues and parties nor want to read, scrutinise and conduct debates on the matter.

My annoyance here is that many of these people do hold at least an opinion on what's fair. I'm sure they know things that should be done better or are at least a little annoyed about something wrong with the country. This is politics. It may not be a degree in politics, but it's politics. I don't mind that people don't want to read pages and pages on the subject, but I'd prefer they recognise they've got some fringe interests. I don't think it's much hardship to spend a little time once every five years to support what little democracy we have and use one of numerous online resources to make sure your vote is aligned with your idea of fairness.

Lack of Ambition

This is very much one where I'm going to focus my beef on hating the game, not the players. In fact, I really don't mind or care if all someone wants out of life is to keep getting a salary doing whatever someone will pay them to do, so they can afford to keep a home in which they spend their evenings relaxing in front of a television.

I'm trying not to phrase it in a negative light as I do not hold any contempt for anyone that is happy with that lifestyle. Although I have slight issues with people not happy with it, but do nothing about it. My reason for including this trait is that it's really not one for me. It's a trait I would abhor in myself. So, it's not a "worst trait people can have" so much as "trait which I avoid like the plague".