> it's hard not to occasionally get angry when people keep talking about life-or-death issues as if they're some sort of abstract galaxy brain I think that's t

> it's hard not to occasionally get angry when people keep talking about life-or-death issues as if they're some sort of abstract galaxy brain I think that's the only way we can talk about life and death issues when we disagree. Of all the death I've been close to in my life, let's pick my father who died at least partly as a result of years of incompetent medical care in my hometown that wasn't uncovered until he landed in an ER in a different city. Does that give me the right get to angry and shut down conversations about medical care if people say something I disagree with? I think there are a lot of people who would answer "yes," because they assume that a personal emotional connection to an issue, grounded in experience, always pushes people towards the truth. They love the rule that if somebody present has been personally affected by an issue, then they should get angry, and everybody else present should shut up and accept whatever they have to say. But they believe that because of the bubble they live in. On the rare occasions I get outside my bubble, I find that people's personal experiences most often deepen their commitment to whatever they already believed, even if it's something I think is wrong. For example, I met a conservative Christian who blamed permissive liberal culture for their gay brother suffering from drug addition and periodic homelessness (instead of thinking that maybe growing up gay in a conservative Christian household had something to do with it.) And of course you meet the people who consider themselves authorities on global warming because they grew up on a farm and remember how their family suffered during drought years. You don't know shit about the weather unless you've lived through that! In truth both sides of the political divide in America tend to think that the other side must be emotionally disconnected and inauthentic, and emotional growth would naturally lead them to the truth. Growing up in a small town, I was frequently told that the reason I didn't believe in God was that I wasn't emotionally open to him. I was repressed and disconnected, too cerebral, and that's why I didn't feel His love. Most conservatives think that one reason liberals are able to believe such crazy things is that they derive their emotional sustenance from ideology instead of authentic connection with their neighbors and their community. Most liberals think the same thing about conservatives. Everyone thinks that their side's views are more grounded in authentic experience. There is also a minority of people who value intellect over emotion, and those people believe the opposite: that their side is more rational and fact-driven, the other side is blindly emotional, and their side would triumph if emotion were excluded from discourse. That's not what I'm saying. I'm only saying that a personal connection to an issue shouldn't be treated as a trump card that can shut down a conversation.