knowing lots of idiot conservatives IRL whose opinions amount to “an immigrant looked at me the wrong way once!!!11!!1!”
I seriously doubt this. Rather I suspect you’re, either intentionally or unconsciously, replacing opinions disagreeing with yours with ones that are easier for you to dismiss.
I think you and Acty each live in your own filter bubbles, constructed mostly through subconscious intent. (Beware of believing your enemies are innately evil and intentionally causing themselves to be biased.) Everyone is subconsciously inclined to read authors they agree with; it’s more pleasurable and less painful. In your filter bubble, you read thoughtful conservative thinkers, along with cherry-picked bits of poorly-reasoned liberal extremist thinking, that those conservatives tear apart. And the reverse is true for Acty.
I suspect the internet is increasing the ease of forming these sort of bubbles, which seems like a huge problem.
FWIW, I am disappointed to see political discussion drift from object-level political disagreements to person-level disagreements about who is more biased. I virtually never see a good outcome from such a discussion. I suppose it’s an occupational hazard participating in discussions on a website about bias.
You could have said something to the effect of “not all conservatives have such dumb opinions, they aren’t representative of all conservatism, and there also are liberals with even dumber opinions, and anyway it’s not a good idea to judge memeplexes from their worst members”—but no, you chose to go for James A. Donald-level asshattery—“if you say you know conservatives with dumb opinions, you’re probably lying or confabulating”. (And somehow even got seven upvotes for that.) What does make you think it’s so unlikely that Acty actually knows conservatives with dumb opinions? Are you familiar with all groups of conservatives worldwide?
Because those vectors of argument are insufficiently patronizing, I’m guessing.
But in all seriousness, the “judging memeplexes from their worst members” issue is pretty interesting, because politicized ideologies and really any ideology that someone has a name for and integrates into their identity (“I am a conservative” or “I am a feminist” or “I am an objectivist” or whatever) are really fuzzily defined.
To use the example we’re talking about: Is conservatism about traditional values and bolstering the nuclear family? Is conservatism about defunding the government and encouraging private industry to flourish? Is conservatism about biblical literalism and establishing god’s law on earth? Is conservatism about privacy and individual liberties? Is conservatism about nationalism and purity and wariness of immigrants? I’ve encountered conservatives who care about all of these things. I’ve encountered conservatives who only care about some of them. I’ve encountered at least one conservative who has defined conservatism to me in terms of each of those things.
So when I go to my internal dictionary of terms-to-describe-ideologies, which conservatism do I pull? I know plenty of techie-libertarian-cluster people who call themselves conservatives who are atheists. I know plenty of religious people who call themselves conservatives who think that cryptography is a scary terrorist thing and should be outlawed. I know self-identified conservatives who think that the recent revelations about NSA surveillance are proof that the government is overreaching, and self-identified conservatives who think that if you have nothing to hide from the NSA then you have nothing to fear, so what’s the big deal?
I do not identify as a conservative. I can steelman lots of kinds of conservatism extremely well. Honestly I have some beliefs that some of my conservative-identifying friends would consider core conservative tenets. I still don’t know what the fuck a conservative is, because the term gets used by a ton of people who believe very strongly in its value but mean different things when they say it.
So I have no doubt that not only has Acty encountered conservatives who are stupid, but that their particular flavor of stupid are core tenets of what they consider conservatism. The problem is that this colors her beliefs about other kinds of conservatives, some of whom might only be in the same cluster in person-ideology-identity space because they use the same word. This is not an Acty-specific problem by any means. I know arguably no one who completely succeeds at not doing this, the labels are just that bad. Who gets to use the label? If I meet someone and they volunteer the information that they identify as a conservative, what conclusions should I draw about their ideological positions?
I think the problem has to stem from sticking the ideology-label onto one’s identity, because then when an individual has opinions, it’s really hard for them to separate their opinions from their ideology-identity-label, especially when they’re arguing with a standard enemy of that ideology-label, and thus can easily view themselves as standing in for the ideology itself. The conclusion I draw is that as soon as an ideology is an identity-label, it quickly becomes pretty close to useless as a bit of information by itself, and that the speed at which this happens is somewhat correlated to the popularity of the label.
I’d argue that that little one-off comment was less patronizing and more… sarcastic and mean.
Yeah, not all that productive either way. My bad. I apologize.
But I think the larger point stands about how these ideological labels are super leaky and way too schizophrenically defined by way too many people to really even be able to meaningfully say something like “That’s not a representative sample of conservatives!”, let alone “You probably haven’t met people like that, you’re just confabulating your memory of them because you hate conservatism”
“That’s not a representative sample of conservatives!”, let alone “You probably haven’t met people like that, you’re just confabulating your memory of them because you hate conservatism”
One of those statements refers to a concrete event (or series of events), the other depends on the exact definition of conservative.
What does make you think it’s so unlikely that Acty actually knows conservatives with dumb opinions?
Well the fact that Acty has a tendency to not read/listen to what her opponents say and replace it with something easy to dismiss, as she has previously demonstrated in this very thread.
What does make you think it’s so unlikely that Acty actually knows conservatives with dumb opinions?
What makes you think it’s so unlikely that Acty is giving an inacurate report of their arguments?
What makes you think it’s so unlikely that Acty is giving an inacurate report of their arguments?
I don’t. I think both P(Acty actually knows conservatives with dumb opinions) and P(Acty is giving an inacurate report of their arguments) are sizeable.
I’m going to be cynical here, and say that most conservative opinions are idiotic, and most liberal opinions are idiotic. Its an instance of the ’90% of everything is shit’ principle.
I seriously doubt this. Rather I suspect you’re, either intentionally or unconsciously, replacing opinions disagreeing with yours with ones that are easier for you to dismiss.
I think you and Acty each live in your own filter bubbles, constructed mostly through subconscious intent. (Beware of believing your enemies are innately evil and intentionally causing themselves to be biased.) Everyone is subconsciously inclined to read authors they agree with; it’s more pleasurable and less painful. In your filter bubble, you read thoughtful conservative thinkers, along with cherry-picked bits of poorly-reasoned liberal extremist thinking, that those conservatives tear apart. And the reverse is true for Acty.
I suspect the internet is increasing the ease of forming these sort of bubbles, which seems like a huge problem.
FWIW, I am disappointed to see political discussion drift from object-level political disagreements to person-level disagreements about who is more biased. I virtually never see a good outcome from such a discussion. I suppose it’s an occupational hazard participating in discussions on a website about bias.
You could have said something to the effect of “not all conservatives have such dumb opinions, they aren’t representative of all conservatism, and there also are liberals with even dumber opinions, and anyway it’s not a good idea to judge memeplexes from their worst members”—but no, you chose to go for James A. Donald-level asshattery—“if you say you know conservatives with dumb opinions, you’re probably lying or confabulating”. (And somehow even got seven upvotes for that.) What does make you think it’s so unlikely that Acty actually knows conservatives with dumb opinions? Are you familiar with all groups of conservatives worldwide?
Because those vectors of argument are insufficiently patronizing, I’m guessing.
But in all seriousness, the “judging memeplexes from their worst members” issue is pretty interesting, because politicized ideologies and really any ideology that someone has a name for and integrates into their identity (“I am a conservative” or “I am a feminist” or “I am an objectivist” or whatever) are really fuzzily defined.
To use the example we’re talking about: Is conservatism about traditional values and bolstering the nuclear family? Is conservatism about defunding the government and encouraging private industry to flourish? Is conservatism about biblical literalism and establishing god’s law on earth? Is conservatism about privacy and individual liberties? Is conservatism about nationalism and purity and wariness of immigrants? I’ve encountered conservatives who care about all of these things. I’ve encountered conservatives who only care about some of them. I’ve encountered at least one conservative who has defined conservatism to me in terms of each of those things.
So when I go to my internal dictionary of terms-to-describe-ideologies, which conservatism do I pull? I know plenty of techie-libertarian-cluster people who call themselves conservatives who are atheists. I know plenty of religious people who call themselves conservatives who think that cryptography is a scary terrorist thing and should be outlawed. I know self-identified conservatives who think that the recent revelations about NSA surveillance are proof that the government is overreaching, and self-identified conservatives who think that if you have nothing to hide from the NSA then you have nothing to fear, so what’s the big deal?
I do not identify as a conservative. I can steelman lots of kinds of conservatism extremely well. Honestly I have some beliefs that some of my conservative-identifying friends would consider core conservative tenets. I still don’t know what the fuck a conservative is, because the term gets used by a ton of people who believe very strongly in its value but mean different things when they say it.
So I have no doubt that not only has Acty encountered conservatives who are stupid, but that their particular flavor of stupid are core tenets of what they consider conservatism. The problem is that this colors her beliefs about other kinds of conservatives, some of whom might only be in the same cluster in person-ideology-identity space because they use the same word. This is not an Acty-specific problem by any means. I know arguably no one who completely succeeds at not doing this, the labels are just that bad. Who gets to use the label? If I meet someone and they volunteer the information that they identify as a conservative, what conclusions should I draw about their ideological positions?
I think the problem has to stem from sticking the ideology-label onto one’s identity, because then when an individual has opinions, it’s really hard for them to separate their opinions from their ideology-identity-label, especially when they’re arguing with a standard enemy of that ideology-label, and thus can easily view themselves as standing in for the ideology itself. The conclusion I draw is that as soon as an ideology is an identity-label, it quickly becomes pretty close to useless as a bit of information by itself, and that the speed at which this happens is somewhat correlated to the popularity of the label.
Right, it’s only OK to be patronizing to people who aren’t present to defend themselves.
I’d argue that that little one-off comment was less patronizing and more… sarcastic and mean.
Yeah, not all that productive either way. My bad. I apologize.
But I think the larger point stands about how these ideological labels are super leaky and way too schizophrenically defined by way too many people to really even be able to meaningfully say something like “That’s not a representative sample of conservatives!”, let alone “You probably haven’t met people like that, you’re just confabulating your memory of them because you hate conservatism”
One of those statements refers to a concrete event (or series of events), the other depends on the exact definition of conservative.
Well the fact that Acty has a tendency to not read/listen to what her opponents say and replace it with something easy to dismiss, as she has previously demonstrated in this very thread.
What makes you think it’s so unlikely that Acty is giving an inacurate report of their arguments?
I don’t. I think both P(Acty actually knows conservatives with dumb opinions) and P(Acty is giving an inacurate report of their arguments) are sizeable.
I’m going to be cynical here, and say that most conservative opinions are idiotic, and most liberal opinions are idiotic. Its an instance of the ’90% of everything is shit’ principle.