4 ms·

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 abl

by 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.
- mlac 5y ago
  If a policy is effective and correct, I would not call it extreme. I guess it depends on the definition of extreme, but I would not think "good" policy would be extreme in the sense that it has (whether real or perceived) negative externalities on a large portion of the population. Two years ago, I (and perhaps the country) would have said the PPP for paychecks would have been extreme. Given the (extreme) circumstances that occurred, it became a reasonable approach. I would argue people that shut down dialogue are advocating for an extreme position (e.g. doing nothing and maintaining status quo can be an extreme approach in some cases). I don't know if single-payer health care is too extreme, but any and all options should be discussed, and a reasonable course of action should be taken. I think most people agree that the current situation we have is a broken mess of half-measures. I don't think we're stuck with an either-or situation. [This feels like the most Yogi Berra thing I've ever written] There is merit to discussing chopping off the finger or doing nothing. Both solutions are worth understanding - one avoids gangrene and the other saves the finger at the potential for the infection. Given no other choices or options available, the decision maker will have to choose one option or the other. But when other alternatives exist (e.g. modern medicine), creating a false dichotomy between the two camps yelling the loudest is not an optimal approach.
  - ABCLAW 5y ago
    >If a policy is effective and correct, I would not call it extreme. >I guess it depends on the definition of extreme, but I would not think "good" policy would be extreme The issue is that you've begged the question in your definition: Good policy isn't extreme, therefore all policy that is extreme isn't good, therefore no extreme policy. You've just redefined extreme to mean bad - so we can't really discuss much more. I'll propose a different definition for use here, one that accords with common use: 'Extreme', in this case, is whether or not the position is unreasonable, unmoderate, or exceedingly unusual. With this definition we can find examples of positive extreme policy positions: We take take the abolition of slavery as an example of extreme policy. Granting women suffrage is another. Desegregation is another. This isn't to say that all extreme policy positions are right - many, maybe most, are wrong. But digging into the trade-offs between the two requires a far more nuanced discussion than the one we're having here, because there's a lot of legal history about the relative velocity of legislative change and that's gonna take up more room than we have.

by mlac 5y ago

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.

mlac 5y ago
If a policy is effective and correct, I would not call it extreme. I guess it depends on the definition of extreme, but I would not think "good" policy would be extreme in the sense that it has (whether real or perceived) negative externalities on a large portion of the population. Two years ago, I (and perhaps the country) would have said the PPP for paychecks would have been extreme. Given the (extreme) circumstances that occurred, it became a reasonable approach. I would argue people that shut down dialogue are advocating for an extreme position (e.g. doing nothing and maintaining status quo can be an extreme approach in some cases). I don't know if single-payer health care is too extreme, but any and all options should be discussed, and a reasonable course of action should be taken. I think most people agree that the current situation we have is a broken mess of half-measures. I don't think we're stuck with an either-or situation. [This feels like the most Yogi Berra thing I've ever written] There is merit to discussing chopping off the finger or doing nothing. Both solutions are worth understanding - one avoids gangrene and the other saves the finger at the potential for the infection. Given no other choices or options available, the decision maker will have to choose one option or the other. But when other alternatives exist (e.g. modern medicine), creating a false dichotomy between the two camps yelling the loudest is not an optimal approach.
- ABCLAW 5y ago
  >If a policy is effective and correct, I would not call it extreme. >I guess it depends on the definition of extreme, but I would not think "good" policy would be extreme The issue is that you've begged the question in your definition: Good policy isn't extreme, therefore all policy that is extreme isn't good, therefore no extreme policy. You've just redefined extreme to mean bad - so we can't really discuss much more. I'll propose a different definition for use here, one that accords with common use: 'Extreme', in this case, is whether or not the position is unreasonable, unmoderate, or exceedingly unusual. With this definition we can find examples of positive extreme policy positions: We take take the abolition of slavery as an example of extreme policy. Granting women suffrage is another. Desegregation is another. This isn't to say that all extreme policy positions are right - many, maybe most, are wrong. But digging into the trade-offs between the two requires a far more nuanced discussion than the one we're having here, because there's a lot of legal history about the relative velocity of legislative change and that's gonna take up more room than we have.