In the same spirit, some questions on the post itself:
-Could you be flattering rationalists here by telling them all their debates and disagreements are signs of their healthy culture?
-Could you be using contrarianism as a badge of identity yourself, a way to find community with fellow contrarians?
-Are you sure you’re not using your description of ‘woke’ culture as a way to attack what is here an outgroup, rather than as a fair description of a purity phenomenon that happens in many ideologies?
Not saying I know the answer to these questions but always worth turning the lightbeam inwards now and then.
Flattering rationalists, yes. Willingness to allow disagreements is just a simple baseline indicator. I’d say my criticism of Rationalists’ culture is the tendency to create theories instead of going out and getting data, as crafting and reading about theories is more entertaining than looking at spreadsheets. My own post is a perfect example of being guilty of this. It would be a much better post with a bunch of statistics and studies attached, but I have a day job.
Contrarianism as an identity: I don’t think so.. it’s not a major piece anyway.
“woke” as an outgroup to attack: yes, it’s an outgroup for me, and if I was inventing concepts that only applied to one ideology I didn’t like, that would be suspicious. But I’ve genuinely found that thinking about “ideocultures” has helped me keep a healthy skeptical distance and disentagle a bit from a couple of different ones. The concept came from trying to describe Reddit’s diverse groupthinks across subs rather than something to attack “wokeness” with in particular. I think it’s a nice deradicalizing concept in general for politics for any side, especially the question “what have you been conditioned to pay special attention to, and what have you been conditioned to ignore?”
Nonetheless, there has also been discussion that “wokeness” is difficult to define, as well as the idea that it’s “like a religion” in some way. The “ideoculture” concept helps to clarify things there.
In the same spirit, some questions on the post itself:
-Could you be flattering rationalists here by telling them all their debates and disagreements are signs of their healthy culture? -Could you be using contrarianism as a badge of identity yourself, a way to find community with fellow contrarians? -Are you sure you’re not using your description of ‘woke’ culture as a way to attack what is here an outgroup, rather than as a fair description of a purity phenomenon that happens in many ideologies?
Not saying I know the answer to these questions but always worth turning the lightbeam inwards now and then.
Flattering rationalists, yes. Willingness to allow disagreements is just a simple baseline indicator. I’d say my criticism of Rationalists’ culture is the tendency to create theories instead of going out and getting data, as crafting and reading about theories is more entertaining than looking at spreadsheets. My own post is a perfect example of being guilty of this. It would be a much better post with a bunch of statistics and studies attached, but I have a day job.
Contrarianism as an identity: I don’t think so.. it’s not a major piece anyway.
“woke” as an outgroup to attack: yes, it’s an outgroup for me, and if I was inventing concepts that only applied to one ideology I didn’t like, that would be suspicious. But I’ve genuinely found that thinking about “ideocultures” has helped me keep a healthy skeptical distance and disentagle a bit from a couple of different ones. The concept came from trying to describe Reddit’s diverse groupthinks across subs rather than something to attack “wokeness” with in particular. I think it’s a nice deradicalizing concept in general for politics for any side, especially the question “what have you been conditioned to pay special attention to, and what have you been conditioned to ignore?”
Nonetheless, there has also been discussion that “wokeness” is difficult to define, as well as the idea that it’s “like a religion” in some way. The “ideoculture” concept helps to clarify things there.