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Liking moderate behavior is because you're a moderate. Which is basically my point. You didn't explain how it's a fallacy rather than just state it is. The mid

Liking moderate behavior is because you're a moderate. Which is basically my point. You didn't explain how it's a fallacy rather than just state it is. The middle ground might be right in some stuff, it might also be extremely damaging in others. I'm sure you can think of examples for that.

dotnet00 5y ago
In my experience, when people cite the middle ground fallacy, it's because they're so radicalized that they believe that to a self-described centrist, the ideal compromise between genocide and no genocide is half a genocide, which is obviously a complete strawman. I've only ever seen it used in bad faith arguments of that sort, thus my previous comment. In my opinion that sort of ever more absurd "if you're not with us you're against us" type thinking is what has turned social media into such a cesspool, and by enforcing a sort of moderate state, that sort of person gets pushed away, making the space more tolerable for healthier minds. Eg. with abortion it's almost impossible to have a civil, nuanced debate on social media because the extremes of both sides have cemented themselves into (fairly hypocritical) positions that paint everyone who isn't fully with them as an enemy, even though there's a lot of room for reasonable compromise and healthy debate on the effects and tradeoffs of specifics of related policy.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  I mean the example you give is actually great. The idea that everything should be a debate is kinda how things get pushed to really weird areas. Most Americans would argue (and there's data to back this up) that abortion shouldn't even be something that we need to have a nuanced discussion about. The idea of nuanced discussion for everything is how stuff get pushed into harmful and extremist views. The idea of "nuanced discussion" doesn't really work when the outcome of one side of the nuanced discussion is the subjugation of a whole class of people. America went through "nuanced discussion" about the "Japanese problem". It went through "nuanced discussion" about civil rights. Most of this ended up either literally fucking over a group of innocent people, or delaying action that should've been taken decades prior. The idea that a "nuanced discussion" is the way to go is exactly what that fallacy is talking about. Basically you can't have people's rights and lives talked about as if one side of the discussion has the right to take that away from them. Think about how long it took us to legalize gay marriage. The only thing that got the ball really rolling was stonewall. Or think about the Vietnam War. Extremists helped end it. How about climate change? Do we have a nuanced discussion between the older population who is going to be dead by the time this becomes a problem, or do we listen to the climate extemists who are generally younger and the ones who are going to get fucked by this? Anyway, middle ground politics is a dead area and not something that always works. The people who like it are generally the people who are fine with the status quo. So of course you're going to see angry view points (who most of the time have all the right to be angry) as a cesspool.

dotnet00 5y ago

In my experience, when people cite the middle ground fallacy, it's because they're so radicalized that they believe that to a self-described centrist, the ideal compromise between genocide and no genocide is half a genocide, which is obviously a complete strawman. I've only ever seen it used in bad faith arguments of that sort, thus my previous comment. In my opinion that sort of ever more absurd "if you're not with us you're against us" type thinking is what has turned social media into such a cesspool, and by enforcing a sort of moderate state, that sort of person gets pushed away, making the space more tolerable for healthier minds. Eg. with abortion it's almost impossible to have a civil, nuanced debate on social media because the extremes of both sides have cemented themselves into (fairly hypocritical) positions that paint everyone who isn't fully with them as an enemy, even though there's a lot of room for reasonable compromise and healthy debate on the effects and tradeoffs of specifics of related policy.

aaomidi 5y ago
I mean the example you give is actually great. The idea that everything should be a debate is kinda how things get pushed to really weird areas. Most Americans would argue (and there's data to back this up) that abortion shouldn't even be something that we need to have a nuanced discussion about. The idea of nuanced discussion for everything is how stuff get pushed into harmful and extremist views. The idea of "nuanced discussion" doesn't really work when the outcome of one side of the nuanced discussion is the subjugation of a whole class of people. America went through "nuanced discussion" about the "Japanese problem". It went through "nuanced discussion" about civil rights. Most of this ended up either literally fucking over a group of innocent people, or delaying action that should've been taken decades prior. The idea that a "nuanced discussion" is the way to go is exactly what that fallacy is talking about. Basically you can't have people's rights and lives talked about as if one side of the discussion has the right to take that away from them. Think about how long it took us to legalize gay marriage. The only thing that got the ball really rolling was stonewall. Or think about the Vietnam War. Extremists helped end it. How about climate change? Do we have a nuanced discussion between the older population who is going to be dead by the time this becomes a problem, or do we listen to the climate extemists who are generally younger and the ones who are going to get fucked by this? Anyway, middle ground politics is a dead area and not something that always works. The people who like it are generally the people who are fine with the status quo. So of course you're going to see angry view points (who most of the time have all the right to be angry) as a cesspool.