> ...and that these are not merely artifacts of one's own cognition or of rhetorical gotchas. A non-"pedantic" person might read this and accidentally form the

> ...and that these are not merely artifacts of one's own cognition or of rhetorical gotchas. A non-"pedantic" person might read this and accidentally form the belief that they are not often just rhetorical gotchas, or that they are not artifacts of one's own cognition (which they are....but they are not only that....and, it is fairly well known even by science how unreliable our Narrator of Reality is). The relative perfection of the US and other "democracies" is what it is, and that perfection is plausibly substantially influenced by the degree to which citizens collectively buy into the stories of how good they are ("if it ain't broke..."). Do you disagree that most people's models of the quality of various governments rest upon a bed of stories? Or another way of asking the question: do you believe that there is an accurate methodology in existence to objectively determine with high accuracy the quality of each nation in this regard (and also that most people utilize such a methodology, as opposed to believing the stories that please them)? > They do not "barely have meaning" and one can travel to various places on the earth and try simple experiments to prove it. It's a fair point, but the claim was: "They barely have meaning in political discourse nowadays". There is a difference, and the importance of the difference is very tricky. > Absolutely wild to be saying "go travel and try to exercise a freedom there" is seen as an appeal to cognition while "I would rather not engage in illusory thinking" is... what exactly? Also wild: you sidestepping the other metric I mentioned, and leading out with supreme self-confidence. But then, truthfulness and accuracy is perhaps not the game being playing here, considering the topic. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i...