5 ms·

Should it be?

freedomben 8y ago
Ideally, yes. It goes a long way to keeping the arguments grounded in reality and avoiding strawman fallacies (not implying that any of that occurred in this article).
- windows_tips 8y ago
  Seems like dialectical arguments are highly reliant on strawmen, pretty much by definition.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I disagree. I think in this topic, you often have to ignore a ton of side channel counterpoints to get a fully fledged theory out that spans a wide enough set of phenomena to be useful. After reading this, and recognizing that of course it’s not going to be a perfect analysis or perfect theory, then it would be good to create dialectical discussions and rejoinders that bring back in various specific side channel topics or disagreements with the overall theory. If you tried going in a point-counterpoint-countercounterpoint manner through such a huge topic, you’ll get derailed by the million ways to bikeshed about different phenomena that the theory doesn’t perfectly account for, or predictions it makes which you dispute, and often the derailing will get political and super unproductive and zap the energy out of the bigger picture. I think an essay like this is the right way to do it. Comprehensive, start from first principles, make the terms clear, and draw it to a full completion of the predictions or analysis you want to make. Then rejoinders can easily proceed dialectically with counterpoints to specific parts, and the whole thing is much more organized, and side channel counterpoints have a prayer of getting discussed without it becoming loopy, unproductive politics.
  - lifeformed 8y ago
    I agree, I think it helps to treat theories like this as just one model for looking at society in a particular way. It's not the one and only model, and it's not prescriptive or perfect. It's a lens that lets us focus on its key theme - different types of high-level values and how they interact to shape society. It's a handy tool I'll put in my mental toolbox but it's not going to become my Swiss army knife.

Should it be?

Ideally, yes. It goes a long way to keeping the arguments grounded in reality and avoiding strawman fallacies (not implying that any of that occurred in this article).

windows_tips 8y ago
Seems like dialectical arguments are highly reliant on strawmen, pretty much by definition.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I disagree. I think in this topic, you often have to ignore a ton of side channel counterpoints to get a fully fledged theory out that spans a wide enough set of phenomena to be useful. After reading this, and recognizing that of course it’s not going to be a perfect analysis or perfect theory, then it would be good to create dialectical discussions and rejoinders that bring back in various specific side channel topics or disagreements with the overall theory. If you tried going in a point-counterpoint-countercounterpoint manner through such a huge topic, you’ll get derailed by the million ways to bikeshed about different phenomena that the theory doesn’t perfectly account for, or predictions it makes which you dispute, and often the derailing will get political and super unproductive and zap the energy out of the bigger picture. I think an essay like this is the right way to do it. Comprehensive, start from first principles, make the terms clear, and draw it to a full completion of the predictions or analysis you want to make. Then rejoinders can easily proceed dialectically with counterpoints to specific parts, and the whole thing is much more organized, and side channel counterpoints have a prayer of getting discussed without it becoming loopy, unproductive politics.
- lifeformed 8y ago
  I agree, I think it helps to treat theories like this as just one model for looking at society in a particular way. It's not the one and only model, and it's not prescriptive or perfect. It's a lens that lets us focus on its key theme - different types of high-level values and how they interact to shape society. It's a handy tool I'll put in my mental toolbox but it's not going to become my Swiss army knife.