People with strong political identities usually have their maps systematically distorted.
Oh, certainly. Feminism points out, though, that the social mainstream is also a strong political identity which systematically distorts people’s maps. They use somewhat unfortunate historical words for this effect, like “patriarchy”. That’s just a label on their maps, though; calling a stream a creek doesn’t change the water.
So combining this with your guideline, we should be careful not to invite anyone who has a strong political identity … but we cannot do that, because “ordinary guy” (and “normal woman”) is a strong political identity too. It’s just a strong political identity one of whose tenets is that it is not a strong political identity.
We don’t have the freedom to set out with an undistorted map, nor of having a perfect guide as to whose maps are more distorted. Being wrong doesn’t feel like being wrong. A false belief doesn’t feel like a false belief. If you start with ignorance priors and have a different life, you do not end up with the same posteriors. And as a consequence, meeting someone who has different data from you can feel like meeting someone who is just plain wrong about a lot of things!
Also … I wonder what a person whose maps of the social world were really “no better than random” would look like. I think he or she would be vastly more unfortunate than a paranoid schizophrenic. He or she would certainly be grossly unable to function in society, lacking any ability to model or predict other people. As a result, he or she would probably have no friends, job, or political allies. Lacking the ability to work with other people at all, he or she would certainly not look like a member of any political movement.
As such, I have to consider that when applied to someone who clearly does not have these attributes, that expression is being used as merely a crude insult, akin to calling someone a “drooling moron” or “mental incompetent” because they disagree with you.
Even if everyone’s map is distorted, I think there is an important difference whether people try to update, or don’t even try. Which is part of what this website is about.
In other words, I would be okay with an X-ist who says they could be convinced against X-ism by evidence, even if they obviously consider such evidence very unlikely.
(And I obviously wouldn’t be okay with people suggesting that presenting an evidence against X-ism should be punished.)
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)
I strongly suspect that people who make the claim “no amount of evidence could convince me of not-X” have simply absorbed the meme that X must be supported as much as possible and not the meme that all beliefs should be subject to updating. I very much doubt that expressing the above claim is much evidence that the claim is true. And it’s hard to absorb memes like “all beliefs should be subject to updating” if you are made to feel unwelcome in the communities where those memes are common.
Feminism points out, though, that the social mainstream is also a strong political identity which systematically distorts people’s maps.
This sounds awfully like “if you’re not with me, you’re my enemy.” Any advice how to untangle myself from this web that seems inescapable? I already don’t vote or read the news from any particular source, nor do I actively try to change political opinions.
People with agendas seem to want to make everything about politics and me as their pawn as a consequence. When they try to take my passiveness IRL as a sign of opposition to their political agenda, I usually proceed to explain how much more of a political enemy I could be just to demonstrate my point if I cared to.
People who do not claim a named gender-related political identity (like “feminist” or “MRA”) nonetheless typically explicitly teach and reinforce ideas about gender … and get defensive about them in pretty much the same way that people get defensive about political ideas.
Oh, certainly. Feminism points out, though, that the social mainstream is also a strong political identity which systematically distorts people’s maps. They use somewhat unfortunate historical words for this effect, like “patriarchy”. That’s just a label on their maps, though; calling a stream a creek doesn’t change the water.
So combining this with your guideline, we should be careful not to invite anyone who has a strong political identity … but we cannot do that, because “ordinary guy” (and “normal woman”) is a strong political identity too. It’s just a strong political identity one of whose tenets is that it is not a strong political identity.
We don’t have the freedom to set out with an undistorted map, nor of having a perfect guide as to whose maps are more distorted. Being wrong doesn’t feel like being wrong. A false belief doesn’t feel like a false belief. If you start with ignorance priors and have a different life, you do not end up with the same posteriors. And as a consequence, meeting someone who has different data from you can feel like meeting someone who is just plain wrong about a lot of things!
Also … I wonder what a person whose maps of the social world were really “no better than random” would look like. I think he or she would be vastly more unfortunate than a paranoid schizophrenic. He or she would certainly be grossly unable to function in society, lacking any ability to model or predict other people. As a result, he or she would probably have no friends, job, or political allies. Lacking the ability to work with other people at all, he or she would certainly not look like a member of any political movement.
As such, I have to consider that when applied to someone who clearly does not have these attributes, that expression is being used as merely a crude insult, akin to calling someone a “drooling moron” or “mental incompetent” because they disagree with you.
tldr: Having strong political opinions feels like common sense from the inside.
Even if everyone’s map is distorted, I think there is an important difference whether people try to update, or don’t even try. Which is part of what this website is about.
In other words, I would be okay with an X-ist who says they could be convinced against X-ism by evidence, even if they obviously consider such evidence very unlikely.
(And I obviously wouldn’t be okay with people suggesting that presenting an evidence against X-ism should be punished.)
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)
I strongly suspect that people who make the claim “no amount of evidence could convince me of not-X” have simply absorbed the meme that X must be supported as much as possible and not the meme that all beliefs should be subject to updating. I very much doubt that expressing the above claim is much evidence that the claim is true. And it’s hard to absorb memes like “all beliefs should be subject to updating” if you are made to feel unwelcome in the communities where those memes are common.
This sounds awfully like “if you’re not with me, you’re my enemy.” Any advice how to untangle myself from this web that seems inescapable? I already don’t vote or read the news from any particular source, nor do I actively try to change political opinions.
People with agendas seem to want to make everything about politics and me as their pawn as a consequence. When they try to take my passiveness IRL as a sign of opposition to their political agenda, I usually proceed to explain how much more of a political enemy I could be just to demonstrate my point if I cared to.
If everyone has a strong political identity, then the phrase “strong political identity” is meaningless.
Exactly. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence.
Let me try to unpack it a bit:
People who do not claim a named gender-related political identity (like “feminist” or “MRA”) nonetheless typically explicitly teach and reinforce ideas about gender … and get defensive about them in pretty much the same way that people get defensive about political ideas.