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I think your argument makes sense. It fits well with my experiences with "MAGAers" and "SJWs". I also think this style of politics is here to stay, as it is the

I think your argument makes sense. It fits well with my experiences with "MAGAers" and "SJWs". I also think this style of politics is here to stay, as it is the dominate strategy. America has a fracturing hegemony: there is no longer a single universally shared set of basic beliefs. Because we no longer share the same basic beliefs, disagreements are now less likely to be due to logical validity and more likely due to unshared premises. This means the way of politics I think we'd all prefer, of arguing logically from shared core beliefs, will be less useful, making the alternative, arguing emotionally about premises, more effective. I think people "come[ing] across by chance doctrine which appeal to a special part of themself, be it religious, political, or social doctrine" is this effect in action. Though, some criticisms of what you said: 1. It can depend on surroundings. A leftoid will rightly feel like an independent mind in a conservative area and a rightoid will rightly feel like an independent mind in a liberal area. 2. Your logic can misidentify skeptics as traditionalists. It is easy to misconstrue a progressively minded skeptic as a conservative because they criticize most currently popular progressive issues. On a personal note: as a progressively minded skeptic, in my experiences with society, coworkers, friends, significant others, and family, I feel I have increasingly been lumped in as a "deplorable conservative." I have felt this cultural shift coming for many years now, when "SJWs" (I know this hits a sour note with many liberals, but I don't know how else to succinctly categorize these people) first started cropping up in the spaces I frequented: 0. The removal of Christmas celebration from my elementary school 1. Atheism+ 2. My school's official hackathon group (was taken over by left leaning people who said you cannot form teams based on peoples' programming ability) 3. My school's official programming FB group banning "spicy" posts (an example being one where people were arguing failing fizzbuzz is an acceptable way to decide someone is not a programmer) 4. My school via the coed programming fraternity- it was a place full of people involved in 2 and 3 5. The wider programming community (donglegate, stallman's cancellation, linus and sarah sharp controversy, github and meritocracy, redis CoC controversy, etc) 6. Gamergate (specifically attempts to politically pressure games to alter their stories and design to suit audiences that aren't the typical customer). 7. Politics that are safely expressable at work without having a meet 'n greet with HR. Very, very far left ideas are routinely plastered at work, and political "courageous conversations" meetings expect exclusively uncourageous mainstream ideas. 8. Politics that are safely expressable with acquaintances, friends, and family without risk of being excommunicated. 9. For brevity, I exclude many others. Thankfully, the latest batch of ideas (abolish police, abolish suburbs, abolish capital gains) have such a large impact that it has finally given me a hill worth dying on, and I feel free to non-anonymously express, with all the snark of a twitter checkmark, that these ideas blow ass. If that skepticism makes me an oppressor, then I embrace being one. I suppose I do deserve some credit for not being silent, since that would be violence.

sinker 6y ago
At some point ideology meets reality and that's when things begin to crumble. If we construct society and organizations as if merit is not a highly important parameter in achievement, wealth, and success - and instead rely on cosmetics, as if this were inconsequential, then we'll see erosion in all factors which deem a nation or organization successful.
- bendbro 6y ago
  Totally agree. It's unfortunate though that evaluating merit is so dependent on culture. To me, proving what is and isn't merited feels very similar to proving which programming language should be selected for a project. Except for some very rare scenarios you will find yourself dealing with soft reasoning, and the arguments you construct will depend on the audience you are trying to convince. Perhaps this is a problem of my own, but along this vein I find myself producing different proposal documents depending on whether I will be presenting to a developer, manager, or 3rd party team. My belief in there being some major cultural influence on people's reasoning of the connection of their ideology to reality is what gives me some sympathy and belief in arguments from people I almost always disagree with, namely proponents of fixes to systemic * ism. I typically disagree with them on the definition of systemic * ism and the correct fix to the systemic * ism. I believe (with some evidence) the inputs to the system produce the disparity to a much larger extent than the individual components of the system being * ist and as such I believe we should work to correct the inputs rather than altering the components. And when people do propose changing components of the system, I find it does often come at the cost of beneficial things like merit. I think that the people proposing these ideas don't necessarily dislike the ideas the system is based on, but rather than have a dislike of some transitively caused property of the system, propose the most obvious fix to it, and then fail to consider further than first order effects of their change (ex: removing merit resulting in lower quality output). And this is why I consider myself a skeptical progressive: I think the cause of fixing systemic * ism is good, but I think the currently proposed solutions are damaging. I think people who believe everyone who disagrees with them are deplorable would be surprised at the results of sitting down and talking with them. Perhaps the internet is just a bad medium for this.
grandmczeb 6y ago

sinker 6y ago

At some point ideology meets reality and that's when things begin to crumble. If we construct society and organizations as if merit is not a highly important parameter in achievement, wealth, and success - and instead rely on cosmetics, as if this were inconsequential, then we'll see erosion in all factors which deem a nation or organization successful.

bendbro 6y ago
Totally agree. It's unfortunate though that evaluating merit is so dependent on culture. To me, proving what is and isn't merited feels very similar to proving which programming language should be selected for a project. Except for some very rare scenarios you will find yourself dealing with soft reasoning, and the arguments you construct will depend on the audience you are trying to convince. Perhaps this is a problem of my own, but along this vein I find myself producing different proposal documents depending on whether I will be presenting to a developer, manager, or 3rd party team. My belief in there being some major cultural influence on people's reasoning of the connection of their ideology to reality is what gives me some sympathy and belief in arguments from people I almost always disagree with, namely proponents of fixes to systemic * ism. I typically disagree with them on the definition of systemic * ism and the correct fix to the systemic * ism. I believe (with some evidence) the inputs to the system produce the disparity to a much larger extent than the individual components of the system being * ist and as such I believe we should work to correct the inputs rather than altering the components. And when people do propose changing components of the system, I find it does often come at the cost of beneficial things like merit. I think that the people proposing these ideas don't necessarily dislike the ideas the system is based on, but rather than have a dislike of some transitively caused property of the system, propose the most obvious fix to it, and then fail to consider further than first order effects of their change (ex: removing merit resulting in lower quality output). And this is why I consider myself a skeptical progressive: I think the cause of fixing systemic * ism is good, but I think the currently proposed solutions are damaging. I think people who believe everyone who disagrees with them are deplorable would be surprised at the results of sitting down and talking with them. Perhaps the internet is just a bad medium for this.

grandmczeb 6y ago