I think the issue here is that to you progressivism is a set of very specific ideals whereas to me it is a set of general-purpose political tactics.
Judging by the examples you give, the tactic you’re attributing to progressivism is basically harsh condemnation (and often forceful suppression) of purported “human rights abuse” when the perpetrators are ideological enemies, but quiet tolerance (and sometimes even approval) of the same actions when they are perpetrated by allies or by people/groups who do not fit the “bad guy” role in the standard progressive narrative. Is this pretty much what you intended to convey, or am I missing something important?
If I’m not, then I don’t see why you tie this behavior to progressivism in particular. It seems like a pretty universal human failure mode when it comes to politics. Of course, the specifics of the rhetoric employed will differ, but I’m sure I can come up with examples similar to yours that apply to conservatives, or indeed to pretty much any faction influential enough to command widespread popular allegiance and non-negligible political clout. Do you think progressives are disproportionately guilty of this kind of hypocrisy, or that this hypocrisy is more central to the success of progressivism than that of other ideologies? Or are you just using the term “progressive” in a much more encompassing sense than its usual meaning in American political discourse?
I’ve also got to say that I don’t find your three examples of progressive hypocrisy all that compelling (even though I don’t deny the existence of this sort of hypocrisy among progressives—I just think you’re wrong about degree).
On situation A: The claim that progressives completely ignored Vietnamese ethnic cleansing is false. The push for a more inclusive refugee policy in America in the wake of mass Vietnamese displacement (culminating in the Refugee Act of 1980) was spearheaded by progressives in the Congress (like Ted Kennedy) and backed by labor unions. The UNHCR (which I’m assuming Moldbug regards as a tentacle of the progressive kraken) played a major role in drawing attention to the plight of the boat people. It’s true that the Viet Minh’s oppression of ethnic Chinese doesn’t get condemned as vociferously or routinely as the Nazi oppression of Jews, but I don’t buy that this is solely or even primarily attributable to the preservation of the progressive Grand Narrative. One relevant observation is that as bad as the Viet Minh’s treatment of the Ethnic Chinese was, the Nazi treatment of Jews was considerably worse.
As for the Rwandan genocide, once again your characterization of the progressive response doesn’t seem apt. While it is true that America did basically nothing to stem the genocide while it was in progress, some of the harshest criticism of this American inactivity has come from progressive academics (Samantha Power is a prominent example). Also, I don’t think condemnation of the Akazu has been lacking at all. In fact, the impression I get is that Rwanda is the go-to example for modern (post WWII) genocide.
On situation B: I concede that a lot of contemporary discussion of John Brown is unjustifiably reverential, and I don’t consider him particularly heroic. But I do think the difference in motivation between McVeigh and him is very relevant to our evaluation of their respective actions. Also, you seem to take for granted that the Haitian revolution was, on the whole, a bad thing. If not, your claim that Brown should have been dissuaded from starting a slave rebellion by the example of Haiti would make no sense. And I disagree that the Haitian revolution was on the whole a bad thing, despite the considerable loss of life involved. Perhaps this is another instance of progressive double standards, but you’ll have to make that case for me. As it stands, the argument “Haiti’s slave rebellion had horrible results, so John Brown should have expected his rebellion to have horrible results, so he should be treated as someone trying to bring about horrible results” is not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons.
On situation C: I just straight-up reject your characterization of the LCP as “mass murder”. While there have been reports of some patients on the LCP being dehydrated and neglected by hospital staff, the numbers do not remotely approach 10,000. That’s about the total number of people on the pathway, and there is no evidence I’m aware of that more than a small fraction faced systematic mistreatment (in contravention of the actual guidelines for the LCP, I should note). There is also evidence that a number of people on the pathway received exemplary end-of-life care.
And again, your characterization of the progressive response is pretty tendentious. I guess it’s technically true that there are “calls for increased funding to the very organization which enacted” the LCP, but progressives also support increased funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, the very organization which enacted the Tuskegee experiment (gasp!). So no hypocrisy there, then. I find neither demand particularly scandalous, since both organizations do a lot of other good stuff that warrants increased funding. As for the specific abuses of the LCP—while they are much less common than you claim, they are troubling, and as far as I can tell, there has been no significant progressive opposition to the Neuberger review’s recommendation that the LCP be phased out and replaced with something that can be more effectively enforced. I’m not British though, so I may be wrong about this.
Now, it is quite possible that I have to some extent been duped by progressive myth-making in my conception of these situations. If so, I’d appreciate evidence indicating where my beliefs are false.
I concede that a lot of contemporary discussion of John Brown is unjustifiably reverential, and I don’t consider him particularly heroic.
I consider him extremely heroic. Not ultrarational, but there were people suffering in the darkness and crying out for help, a lot of people saying “Later”, and John Brown saying “Fuck this, let’s just do it.” If there’s a historical consensus that the Civil War could have been avoided, I have not encountered it; and that being so, might as well have the Civil War sooner rather than later.
If there’s a historical consensus that the Civil War could have been avoided, I have not encountered it
Here’s an argument. Basically, Lincoln could have acted early to keep half of the South, and a confederacy of just seven coastal states primarily dependent on the global cotton market could have been waited out, or brought to heel quickly.
If I recall my past opinions correctly, I said at the time that while such wars were the only way to free certain countries, I did not trust the competence of the current administration to prosecute it and was strongly against the way in which it was carried out in defiance of international law.
I would say in retrospect that the resulting disaster would have been 2⁄3 of the way to my reasonable upper bound for disastrousness, but the full degree to which e.g. the Bush Defense department was ignoring the Bush State department was surprising and would not become known until years later. I have since adjusted my political cynicism upward, and continue to argue with various community-members about whether the US government can be expected to execute elaborate correct actions based on amazingly accurate theories about AI which they got from university professors (answer: no).
For one thing, it worked. But I wasn’t there at the time, not to mention not being born at the time, so it’s hard to argue about what I would have said about the Civil War.
For certain values of “worked”. Slavery was abolished, similarly Saddam is no longer in power and Iraq is certainly much closer to democracy (at least by Arab standards). Also in both cases the occupation (called “reconstruction” after the civil war) met with heavy resistance and was ultimately discontinued for political reasons. Ultimately Jim Crow was instituted. It is notable that for roughly a century afterwards the civil war was regarded as a tragic mistake.
If there’s a historical consensus that the Civil War could have been avoided, I have not encountered it; and that being so, might as well have the Civil War sooner rather than later.
Well, no way to avoid it other than letting the Confederacy secede. Oh what am I saying; sure if we did that we might saved a few hundred thousand lives but we’d be letting the evil of slavery continue, and that’s obviously such a great evil we can end the discussion right there. We don’t need a decision theory when we’ve got our trusty moral intuitions right?
But on the safe side why don’t we “shut up and multiply” for a second, see what our bargain bought us...
We paid 750,000 lives in the Civil War to free less than 4,000,000 slaves; in other words, the suffering of a lifetime of slavery is evidently worth 18.75% of the death of a free person in a horrific war. In other words, for the trade to come out equal a slave would be suffering more than a chemotherapy patient with recurring metastasized antibiotic-resistant breast cancer and sepsis. And even that weight is far too high; a slave could only expect to suffer for 20 years on average while a free man typically lived to 41, more than twice that value, not to mention that QALY weights are normed against a society with free pornography and twinkies rather than one with regular TB epidemics. So really terminal cancer is an absolute wonderland of fun compared to being in bondage! No wonder it was such a strong moral imperative to justify starting a preposterously bloody war over...
I concede defeat good sir, in the face of your flawless logic. I’m sorry ever to have doubted your well-considered opinion.
Depends on how long slavery would have lasted without the war. You don’t just free current slaves, you prevent future generations from ever being enslaved. I take that to be Yudkowsky’s point- the earlier the better, because the more slaves you prevent.
Edit: Actually, use your own numbers:
a slave could only expect to suffer for 20 years on average while a free man typically lived to 41
This implies converting someone from slave to free should increase their life by 20+ years, approximately half the life time of a free person. Just multiplying, using 1 free person dead = 41 years lost, one slave freed = 21 years gained, we pass a cost benefit test.
This implies converting someone from slave to free should increase their life by 20+ years, approximately half the life time of a free person. Just multiplying, using 1 free person dead = 41 years lost, one slave freed = 21 years gained, we pass a cost benefit test.
Not quite. The lower life expectancy due to slavery may be the result of early malnourishment, say, which manumission would not fix.
I’ve seen, but have not investigated, arguments that the civil war and emancipation of slavery led to lower life expectancy among former slaves, and those sorts of claims should be addressed in this calculation.
One historical note I was not aware of until several months back, which was covered in a few books on related subjects which I read at the time, was that for more than a decade after the Civil War, the standard of living and level of equality experienced by recently free blacks was actually quite high. The levels of prejudice which led to the passage of the Jim Crow laws were actually cultivated by deliberately targeted propaganda by upper class industrialists who feared the political threat of lower class white and black laborers acting together as a voting bloc.
(I was initially skeptical of this as a posited explanation for the levels of prejudice which came about in ensuing decades, since humans can easily be induced to turn on each other without any pragmatic incentives, but not only do writings from those who were alive at the time reflect a genuinely dramatic nosedive in the state of racial relations, but some of those who were involved in the propaganda efforts wrote with surprising frankness about their intentions.)
It’s questionable how predictable this turn of events could have been prior to the emancipation, but had it been avoided, the quality of life for free black Americans in ensuing decades might have been considerably higher, and for a decade or so after the war, their quality of life was likely rather higher than we might expect.
The levels of prejudice which led to the passage of the Jim Crow laws were actually cultivated by deliberately targeted propaganda by upper class industrialists who feared the political threat of lower class white and black laborers acting together as a voting bloc.
I think the argument I saw hinged on the strife that happened after emancipation, which is perhaps an argument for more Reconstruction rather than an argument against emancipation. But I don’t remember it well enough; perhaps someone else has seen something similar.
Sure, doing this calculation right would require a great deal more research. Certainly, my prior would be that freeing a slave would result in a longer life expectancy, but I would not expect the gap between slave and free to instantaneously close.
I just wanted to point out that the large slave/free life expectancy gap he was presenting can work against him- and as a result he wasn’t “shutting up and multiplying” correctly, which should undermine the weight of the sarcasm at the end of his post.
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Abraham Lincoln
in other words, the suffering of a lifetime of slavery is evidently worth 18.75% of the death of a free person in a horrific war.
Leaving aside all moral considerations of collective responsibility and individual complicity… and switching to my rough model of preference utilitarianism, which I generally don’t use… this would sound like an incredible, unbelievably lucky bargain with this cruel universe at HALF a life for a freed slave. At 18,75% it appears perverse even to hesitate in this non-dilemma.
P.S.: instead of preference utilitarianism, I do find it much more comfortable to use broadly Christian virtue ethics for a snap moral decision. According to which… well, let’s just mention that even a Catholic like Chesterton could be unapologetic in his respect for the Jacobins. Never mind the Christian abolitionists of the day.
P.S.: instead of preference utilitarianism, I do find it much more comfortable to use broadly Christian virtue ethics for a snap moral decision. According to which… well, let’s just mention that even a Catholic like Chesterton could be unapologetic in his respect for the Jacobins. Never mind the Christian abolitionists of the day.
I’m unclear what this actually means, considering there are usually Christians on every side of moral conflicts.
Backing out a little… if I see two people about to shoot someone tied to a tree, on your view am I ever justified in shooting them both to save the tied-up person’s life? If so, what does it minimally take to justify that?
Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not a utilitarian, I just don’t like hypocrisy.
But in my personal opinion? It’d depend on who’s tied to the tree and who’s shooting. I’d side with the people I value personally first; if they’re all strangers I probably would have to go with the most aesthetically pleasant side or just sit it out. This is assuming a consequence-free vacuum of course; IRL there would be legal/social concerns which would trump any initial preference, not to mention how utterly unfamiliar I am with firearms.
Ah, sorry. I thought you were arguing that the Civil War was a bad idea because it killed more people than it saved. My mistake, and thanks for answering my question.
But in my personal opinion? It’d depend on who’s tied to the tree and who’s shooting. I’d side with the people I value personally first; if they’re all strangers I probably would have to go with the most aesthetically pleasant side or just sit it out.
For clarification here, do you mean behavioral aesthetics such as which people are trying to tie someone to a tree and shoot them, visual aesthetics (which side is better looking,) or some combination or alternative?
A sort of a combo; aesthetics covers a lot of ground. Attractiveness, intelligence, how interesting/valuable their job is and how skilled they are in it, how cute they are (if they’re a kid or other small mammal), how well behaved they are, etc. It’s a lot easier to judge any given example than lay out hard and fast rules.
Judging by the examples you give, the tactic you’re attributing to progressivism is basically harsh condemnation (and often forceful suppression) of purported “human rights abuse” when the perpetrators are ideological enemies, but quiet tolerance (and sometimes even approval) of the same actions when they are perpetrated by allies or by people/groups who do not fit the “bad guy” role in the standard progressive narrative. Is this pretty much what you intended to convey, or am I missing something important?
More or less; it’s all about framing the debate in terms which push popular sentiment leftward. Whoever controls the null hypothesis gets to decide what the data means, and conservatives suck at statistics.
Now each of my examples is debatable; there are official Progressive answers to each dichotomy and they’re all designed to make sense to well educated intelligent people (no-one with any sense would call the Cathedral dim). But if you look at the pattern, not just here but anywhere you look, you see double-standards which invariably favor the political Left and Demotism in general. I can’t force you to see it, and I don’t begrudge it if you don’t, but it is there to see.
Judging by the examples you give, the tactic you’re attributing to progressivism is basically harsh condemnation (and often forceful suppression) of purported “human rights abuse” when the perpetrators are ideological enemies, but quiet tolerance (and sometimes even approval) of the same actions when they are perpetrated by allies or by people/groups who do not fit the “bad guy” role in the standard progressive narrative. Is this pretty much what you intended to convey, or am I missing something important?
If I’m not, then I don’t see why you tie this behavior to progressivism in particular. It seems like a pretty universal human failure mode when it comes to politics. Of course, the specifics of the rhetoric employed will differ, but I’m sure I can come up with examples similar to yours that apply to conservatives, or indeed to pretty much any faction influential enough to command widespread popular allegiance and non-negligible political clout. Do you think progressives are disproportionately guilty of this kind of hypocrisy, or that this hypocrisy is more central to the success of progressivism than that of other ideologies? Or are you just using the term “progressive” in a much more encompassing sense than its usual meaning in American political discourse?
I’ve also got to say that I don’t find your three examples of progressive hypocrisy all that compelling (even though I don’t deny the existence of this sort of hypocrisy among progressives—I just think you’re wrong about degree).
On situation A: The claim that progressives completely ignored Vietnamese ethnic cleansing is false. The push for a more inclusive refugee policy in America in the wake of mass Vietnamese displacement (culminating in the Refugee Act of 1980) was spearheaded by progressives in the Congress (like Ted Kennedy) and backed by labor unions. The UNHCR (which I’m assuming Moldbug regards as a tentacle of the progressive kraken) played a major role in drawing attention to the plight of the boat people. It’s true that the Viet Minh’s oppression of ethnic Chinese doesn’t get condemned as vociferously or routinely as the Nazi oppression of Jews, but I don’t buy that this is solely or even primarily attributable to the preservation of the progressive Grand Narrative. One relevant observation is that as bad as the Viet Minh’s treatment of the Ethnic Chinese was, the Nazi treatment of Jews was considerably worse.
As for the Rwandan genocide, once again your characterization of the progressive response doesn’t seem apt. While it is true that America did basically nothing to stem the genocide while it was in progress, some of the harshest criticism of this American inactivity has come from progressive academics (Samantha Power is a prominent example). Also, I don’t think condemnation of the Akazu has been lacking at all. In fact, the impression I get is that Rwanda is the go-to example for modern (post WWII) genocide.
On situation B: I concede that a lot of contemporary discussion of John Brown is unjustifiably reverential, and I don’t consider him particularly heroic. But I do think the difference in motivation between McVeigh and him is very relevant to our evaluation of their respective actions. Also, you seem to take for granted that the Haitian revolution was, on the whole, a bad thing. If not, your claim that Brown should have been dissuaded from starting a slave rebellion by the example of Haiti would make no sense. And I disagree that the Haitian revolution was on the whole a bad thing, despite the considerable loss of life involved. Perhaps this is another instance of progressive double standards, but you’ll have to make that case for me. As it stands, the argument “Haiti’s slave rebellion had horrible results, so John Brown should have expected his rebellion to have horrible results, so he should be treated as someone trying to bring about horrible results” is not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons.
On situation C: I just straight-up reject your characterization of the LCP as “mass murder”. While there have been reports of some patients on the LCP being dehydrated and neglected by hospital staff, the numbers do not remotely approach 10,000. That’s about the total number of people on the pathway, and there is no evidence I’m aware of that more than a small fraction faced systematic mistreatment (in contravention of the actual guidelines for the LCP, I should note). There is also evidence that a number of people on the pathway received exemplary end-of-life care.
And again, your characterization of the progressive response is pretty tendentious. I guess it’s technically true that there are “calls for increased funding to the very organization which enacted” the LCP, but progressives also support increased funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, the very organization which enacted the Tuskegee experiment (gasp!). So no hypocrisy there, then. I find neither demand particularly scandalous, since both organizations do a lot of other good stuff that warrants increased funding. As for the specific abuses of the LCP—while they are much less common than you claim, they are troubling, and as far as I can tell, there has been no significant progressive opposition to the Neuberger review’s recommendation that the LCP be phased out and replaced with something that can be more effectively enforced. I’m not British though, so I may be wrong about this.
Now, it is quite possible that I have to some extent been duped by progressive myth-making in my conception of these situations. If so, I’d appreciate evidence indicating where my beliefs are false.
I consider him extremely heroic. Not ultrarational, but there were people suffering in the darkness and crying out for help, a lot of people saying “Later”, and John Brown saying “Fuck this, let’s just do it.” If there’s a historical consensus that the Civil War could have been avoided, I have not encountered it; and that being so, might as well have the Civil War sooner rather than later.
Here’s an argument. Basically, Lincoln could have acted early to keep half of the South, and a confederacy of just seven coastal states primarily dependent on the global cotton market could have been waited out, or brought to heel quickly.
To bring this to contemporary examples, do you support Operation Iraqi Freedom?
If I recall my past opinions correctly, I said at the time that while such wars were the only way to free certain countries, I did not trust the competence of the current administration to prosecute it and was strongly against the way in which it was carried out in defiance of international law.
I would say in retrospect that the resulting disaster would have been 2⁄3 of the way to my reasonable upper bound for disastrousness, but the full degree to which e.g. the Bush Defense department was ignoring the Bush State department was surprising and would not become known until years later. I have since adjusted my political cynicism upward, and continue to argue with various community-members about whether the US government can be expected to execute elaborate correct actions based on amazingly accurate theories about AI which they got from university professors (answer: no).
Why doesn’t the same logic apply to the Civil War?
For one thing, it worked. But I wasn’t there at the time, not to mention not being born at the time, so it’s hard to argue about what I would have said about the Civil War.
For certain values of “worked”. Slavery was abolished, similarly Saddam is no longer in power and Iraq is certainly much closer to democracy (at least by Arab standards). Also in both cases the occupation (called “reconstruction” after the civil war) met with heavy resistance and was ultimately discontinued for political reasons. Ultimately Jim Crow was instituted. It is notable that for roughly a century afterwards the civil war was regarded as a tragic mistake.
Well, no way to avoid it other than letting the Confederacy secede. Oh what am I saying; sure if we did that we might saved a few hundred thousand lives but we’d be letting the evil of slavery continue, and that’s obviously such a great evil we can end the discussion right there. We don’t need a decision theory when we’ve got our trusty moral intuitions right?
But on the safe side why don’t we “shut up and multiply” for a second, see what our bargain bought us...
We paid 750,000 lives in the Civil War to free less than 4,000,000 slaves; in other words, the suffering of a lifetime of slavery is evidently worth 18.75% of the death of a free person in a horrific war. In other words, for the trade to come out equal a slave would be suffering more than a chemotherapy patient with recurring metastasized antibiotic-resistant breast cancer and sepsis. And even that weight is far too high; a slave could only expect to suffer for 20 years on average while a free man typically lived to 41, more than twice that value, not to mention that QALY weights are normed against a society with free pornography and twinkies rather than one with regular TB epidemics. So really terminal cancer is an absolute wonderland of fun compared to being in bondage! No wonder it was such a strong moral imperative to justify starting a preposterously bloody war over...
I concede defeat good sir, in the face of your flawless logic. I’m sorry ever to have doubted your well-considered opinion.
Depends on how long slavery would have lasted without the war. You don’t just free current slaves, you prevent future generations from ever being enslaved. I take that to be Yudkowsky’s point- the earlier the better, because the more slaves you prevent.
Edit: Actually, use your own numbers:
This implies converting someone from slave to free should increase their life by 20+ years, approximately half the life time of a free person. Just multiplying, using 1 free person dead = 41 years lost, one slave freed = 21 years gained, we pass a cost benefit test.
Not quite. The lower life expectancy due to slavery may be the result of early malnourishment, say, which manumission would not fix.
I’ve seen, but have not investigated, arguments that the civil war and emancipation of slavery led to lower life expectancy among former slaves, and those sorts of claims should be addressed in this calculation.
One historical note I was not aware of until several months back, which was covered in a few books on related subjects which I read at the time, was that for more than a decade after the Civil War, the standard of living and level of equality experienced by recently free blacks was actually quite high. The levels of prejudice which led to the passage of the Jim Crow laws were actually cultivated by deliberately targeted propaganda by upper class industrialists who feared the political threat of lower class white and black laborers acting together as a voting bloc.
(I was initially skeptical of this as a posited explanation for the levels of prejudice which came about in ensuing decades, since humans can easily be induced to turn on each other without any pragmatic incentives, but not only do writings from those who were alive at the time reflect a genuinely dramatic nosedive in the state of racial relations, but some of those who were involved in the propaganda efforts wrote with surprising frankness about their intentions.)
It’s questionable how predictable this turn of events could have been prior to the emancipation, but had it been avoided, the quality of life for free black Americans in ensuing decades might have been considerably higher, and for a decade or so after the war, their quality of life was likely rather higher than we might expect.
I think the argument I saw hinged on the strife that happened after emancipation, which is perhaps an argument for more Reconstruction rather than an argument against emancipation. But I don’t remember it well enough; perhaps someone else has seen something similar.
Sure, doing this calculation right would require a great deal more research. Certainly, my prior would be that freeing a slave would result in a longer life expectancy, but I would not expect the gap between slave and free to instantaneously close.
I just wanted to point out that the large slave/free life expectancy gap he was presenting can work against him- and as a result he wasn’t “shutting up and multiplying” correctly, which should undermine the weight of the sarcasm at the end of his post.
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Leaving aside all moral considerations of collective responsibility and individual complicity… and switching to my rough model of preference utilitarianism, which I generally don’t use… this would sound like an incredible, unbelievably lucky bargain with this cruel universe at HALF a life for a freed slave. At 18,75% it appears perverse even to hesitate in this non-dilemma.
P.S.: instead of preference utilitarianism, I do find it much more comfortable to use broadly Christian virtue ethics for a snap moral decision. According to which… well, let’s just mention that even a Catholic like Chesterton could be unapologetic in his respect for the Jacobins. Never mind the Christian abolitionists of the day.
I’m unclear what this actually means, considering there are usually Christians on every side of moral conflicts.
Backing out a little… if I see two people about to shoot someone tied to a tree, on your view am I ever justified in shooting them both to save the tied-up person’s life? If so, what does it minimally take to justify that?
Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not a utilitarian, I just don’t like hypocrisy.
But in my personal opinion? It’d depend on who’s tied to the tree and who’s shooting. I’d side with the people I value personally first; if they’re all strangers I probably would have to go with the most aesthetically pleasant side or just sit it out. This is assuming a consequence-free vacuum of course; IRL there would be legal/social concerns which would trump any initial preference, not to mention how utterly unfamiliar I am with firearms.
Ah, sorry. I thought you were arguing that the Civil War was a bad idea because it killed more people than it saved. My mistake, and thanks for answering my question.
For clarification here, do you mean behavioral aesthetics such as which people are trying to tie someone to a tree and shoot them, visual aesthetics (which side is better looking,) or some combination or alternative?
A sort of a combo; aesthetics covers a lot of ground. Attractiveness, intelligence, how interesting/valuable their job is and how skilled they are in it, how cute they are (if they’re a kid or other small mammal), how well behaved they are, etc. It’s a lot easier to judge any given example than lay out hard and fast rules.
More or less; it’s all about framing the debate in terms which push popular sentiment leftward. Whoever controls the null hypothesis gets to decide what the data means, and conservatives suck at statistics.
Now each of my examples is debatable; there are official Progressive answers to each dichotomy and they’re all designed to make sense to well educated intelligent people (no-one with any sense would call the Cathedral dim). But if you look at the pattern, not just here but anywhere you look, you see double-standards which invariably favor the political Left and Demotism in general. I can’t force you to see it, and I don’t begrudge it if you don’t, but it is there to see.