Right. Refusing beforehand to consider certain types of argument/conclusion without looking at their merits, and having freely-acknowledged yet apparently-not-seen-as-a-problem-and-even-actively-justified emotional reactions to those arguments that trigger that refusal[1], seem like exactly the sort of things this site—or any community dedicated to generating quality thought—would want to discourage as much as possible. And when the justification is given in the language of a thede/tribe/political movement/identity that is opposed to the types of argument/conclusion being rejected… well, creating/promoting/incentivizing those emotional reactions is very useful to the movement, but not at all conducive to generating quality thought.
(The fun part about all of this is that it looks like it leads straight to a version of Marcuse’s paradox (tolerance requires intolerance of intolerance): you have to refuse to update toward refusing to update.)
[1] I’ve been calling this sort of thing a memetic immune reaction, extending the memes-as-viruses metaphor. The justification for it isn’t always present, and the emotional trigger to the refusal isn’t always acknowledged, so that blog post is really an excellent case study. (edit: whoops, asterisks are bullet points, can’t footnote that way)
Right. Refusing beforehand to consider certain types of argument/conclusion without looking at their merits, and having freely-acknowledged yet apparently-not-seen-as-a-problem-and-even-actively-justified emotional reactions to those arguments that trigger that refusal[1], seem like exactly the sort of things this site—or any community dedicated to generating quality thought—would want to discourage as much as possible. And when the justification is given in the language of a thede/tribe/political movement/identity that is opposed to the types of argument/conclusion being rejected… well, creating/promoting/incentivizing those emotional reactions is very useful to the movement, but not at all conducive to generating quality thought.
(The fun part about all of this is that it looks like it leads straight to a version of Marcuse’s paradox (tolerance requires intolerance of intolerance): you have to refuse to update toward refusing to update.)
[1] I’ve been calling this sort of thing a memetic immune reaction, extending the memes-as-viruses metaphor. The justification for it isn’t always present, and the emotional trigger to the refusal isn’t always acknowledged, so that blog post is really an excellent case study. (edit: whoops, asterisks are bullet points, can’t footnote that way)