4 ms·

>Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's not because I'm trying to be neutral, it's because both sides are terrifying cesspools You aren't being neutral. Your pos

by ABCLAW 5y ago

>Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's not because I'm trying to be neutral, it's because both sides are terrifying cesspools You aren't being neutral. Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change. That's an understandable position, but it isn't neutrality. Especially not if the status quo is actively negative for certain people. As an aside, this portion of your statement: >It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree with my exact side. Feels like a strawman. The existence of critique isn't a censure. It's just how rational analysis works. You find ideas and you work through them. If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong, and that's why you've adopted a 'centrist' standpoint to get above it all that's a very political position to adopt.

13415 5y ago
I don't think there are or could be neutral political positions, nor would it be desirable to have them.
anm89 5y ago
>Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's NOT because I'm trying to be neutral > You aren't being neutral. My claim is that I'm not neutral and that I'm also not trying to be neutral. >If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong, Speaking of strawmen.
- ABCLAW 5y ago
  It's a bit tough to understand how you reconcile this position with your original paragraph. >Attacking the center is always the craziest narrative to me. It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree with my exact side. The only right way to view these complex issues is to sign your name to join my party and then hold the party line, and everything else is unethical. I can't imagine a more obnoxious political viewpoint than that. Your position is that holding a position and critiquing those that don't hold it is the most obnoxious political viewpoint to take. How can you adopt and advocate for any political position, then, other than a 'non-position' which doesn't actually adopt any stance?
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    What's hard to understand? Picture a spectrum with three points labeled "left", "center", and "right" respectively. Each point is a "position", none of them are neutral (because they all exist on the spectrum).
    - ABCLAW 5y ago
      Because the center has to be qualitatively different from the others in order to escape the cycle of critique presented in the original argument. Otherwise, why is critique of the center different from attacking the left or the right? Why would attacking the center be the "craziest narrative"? The OP's post has a hidden premise, otherwise it does not lead to his conclusion.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        > Otherwise, why is critique of the center different from attacking the left or the right? Presmably the OP meant "it's crazy to attack the center with equal fervor that one applies to the opposite extreme". E.g., leftists attacking everyone to their right as uniformly "far right", using language like "white supremacist" and "literal Nazi" to describe anyone who is not far-left, etc.
mlac 5y ago
Not the OP, but I'll counter: >You aren't being neutral. Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change. It's not that I don't want ANYONE to enact change, I just don't want people with extreme views enacting change. And it's this all-or-nothing discussion that drives the country apart and makes for little or no common ground on major issues. The US Federal laws impact hundreds of millions of people. In most cases, this requires gray areas, exceptions, and a one-size-fits-all approach leaning to one extreme or another creates externalities and negative consequences. People who hold extreme views either don't feel these consequences, don't know them, or do not care about them. If they did, then they wouldn't be in the extreme. For any given situation there are extremes and some path of action between the two that is optimal. Let's say an infected finger - there are extremes (do nothing, cut it off) and an optimal path (some treatment). If OP is in the "some treatment" standpoint, he or she is not advocating for inaction (inaction is actually an extreme in this case), but may be advocating for an optimal, less aggressive approach.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  I'm not sure how "Extreme views enacting change" => Centrism.
  - mlac 5y ago
    I was replying to OP: "Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change."
- ABCLAW 5y ago
  >It's not that I don't want ANYONE to enact change, I just don't want people with extreme views enacting change. This position sounds fine until you realize all it has done is shift discussion away from the effectiveness and correctness of a given policy, to a pre-discussion of the reasonableness of that policy. The heuristic replaces the thing itself. "Is this an extreme position?" replaces "Is this good policy?" This is fine when public discourse is a never-ending deluge of extreme ideas: 'should we commit genocide?' - let's not even bother working through that one. However, in practice this position is often used to prevent or shut down discussion of social legislation aimed at fixing publicly broken but privately lucrative policy positions. Is single-payer healthcare too extreme an idea for the states? Regardless of your answer you've likely seen this exact form of argument. It adds nothing to the discussion and creates a presumption that the status quo is correct. The inverse position isn't 'Is single-payer healthcare good?', it's 'Is remaining on employer funded healthcare too extreme an idea for the states?' Note how the existence of the status quo makes this an uphill battle - how can what already exists be too extreme? Everyone wants the policies they want. Being able to define the policies they do not want as 'extreme' is just an extra tool to ossify and slow legislative change. Which, again, is itself a position to take.
alentist 5y ago
> Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. Non sequitur. > You don't want anyone to be able to enact change. Non sequitur. > If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong, and that's why you've adopted a 'centrist' standpoint Strawman.

by ABCLAW 5y ago

13415 5y ago

I don't think there are or could be neutral political positions, nor would it be desirable to have them.

anm89 5y ago

>Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's NOT because I'm trying to be neutral > You aren't being neutral. My claim is that I'm not neutral and that I'm also not trying to be neutral. >If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong, Speaking of strawmen.

ABCLAW 5y ago
It's a bit tough to understand how you reconcile this position with your original paragraph. >Attacking the center is always the craziest narrative to me. It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree with my exact side. The only right way to view these complex issues is to sign your name to join my party and then hold the party line, and everything else is unethical. I can't imagine a more obnoxious political viewpoint than that. Your position is that holding a position and critiquing those that don't hold it is the most obnoxious political viewpoint to take. How can you adopt and advocate for any political position, then, other than a 'non-position' which doesn't actually adopt any stance?
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  What's hard to understand? Picture a spectrum with three points labeled "left", "center", and "right" respectively. Each point is a "position", none of them are neutral (because they all exist on the spectrum).
  - ABCLAW 5y ago
    Because the center has to be qualitatively different from the others in order to escape the cycle of critique presented in the original argument. Otherwise, why is critique of the center different from attacking the left or the right? Why would attacking the center be the "craziest narrative"? The OP's post has a hidden premise, otherwise it does not lead to his conclusion.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      > Otherwise, why is critique of the center different from attacking the left or the right? Presmably the OP meant "it's crazy to attack the center with equal fervor that one applies to the opposite extreme". E.g., leftists attacking everyone to their right as uniformly "far right", using language like "white supremacist" and "literal Nazi" to describe anyone who is not far-left, etc.

mlac 5y ago

Not the OP, but I'll counter: >You aren't being neutral. Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change. It's not that I don't want ANYONE to enact change, I just don't want people with extreme views enacting change. And it's this all-or-nothing discussion that drives the country apart and makes for little or no common ground on major issues. The US Federal laws impact hundreds of millions of people. In most cases, this requires gray areas, exceptions, and a one-size-fits-all approach leaning to one extreme or another creates externalities and negative consequences. People who hold extreme views either don't feel these consequences, don't know them, or do not care about them. If they did, then they wouldn't be in the extreme. For any given situation there are extremes and some path of action between the two that is optimal. Let's say an infected finger - there are extremes (do nothing, cut it off) and an optimal path (some treatment). If OP is in the "some treatment" standpoint, he or she is not advocating for inaction (inaction is actually an extreme in this case), but may be advocating for an optimal, less aggressive approach.

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
I'm not sure how "Extreme views enacting change" => Centrism.
- mlac 5y ago
  I was replying to OP: "Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change."
ABCLAW 5y ago
>It's not that I don't want ANYONE to enact change, I just don't want people with extreme views enacting change. This position sounds fine until you realize all it has done is shift discussion away from the effectiveness and correctness of a given policy, to a pre-discussion of the reasonableness of that policy. The heuristic replaces the thing itself. "Is this an extreme position?" replaces "Is this good policy?" This is fine when public discourse is a never-ending deluge of extreme ideas: 'should we commit genocide?' - let's not even bother working through that one. However, in practice this position is often used to prevent or shut down discussion of social legislation aimed at fixing publicly broken but privately lucrative policy positions. Is single-payer healthcare too extreme an idea for the states? Regardless of your answer you've likely seen this exact form of argument. It adds nothing to the discussion and creates a presumption that the status quo is correct. The inverse position isn't 'Is single-payer healthcare good?', it's 'Is remaining on employer funded healthcare too extreme an idea for the states?' Note how the existence of the status quo makes this an uphill battle - how can what already exists be too extreme? Everyone wants the policies they want. Being able to define the policies they do not want as 'extreme' is just an extra tool to ossify and slow legislative change. Which, again, is itself a position to take.

alentist 5y ago

> Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. Non sequitur. > You don't want anyone to be able to enact change. Non sequitur. > If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong, and that's why you've adopted a 'centrist' standpoint Strawman.