Are you sure you know how a conservative would interpret Fijian shark-meat prohibitions for pregnant women? Or the average liberal? When I was in college ten years ago, on a super-left campus on which I was a member of the super-super-left, I can promise you that the take would have been anti-colonialist. Today, among my progressive friends, intersectional feminism and an appreciation for the information inherent in traditional teachings is well-established.
You also have to remember that the women who claim their child would be born with shark scales might just be messing with the anthropologists.
I can’t speak to how conservatives would interpret this with the same depth, because I haven’t spent the same kind of time with them. But if you talk to thoughtful conservatives, they too will often have a great appreciation for traditionalism as a means of learning, and that you can’t always explain the tradition.
Overall, I think the point you’re exploring is that there’s a difference between the argument that’s intellectually strongest and the argument most likely to convince group X. Optimize for persuasive power and truth separately, but invest in both.
One interesting aspect of this line of thinking is that if what you want to do is spread the truth, you might have to shift your approach. Instead of swaying people who disagree with policy X to support it, find people who agree with policy X but for (bad) reason Y, and argue that they should support it for (good) reason Z.
I’m not sure what this looks like in practice, besides what we do here of course. In fact it might be just as hard out there in the wild as convincing people who disagree with policy X to become supporters.
Or the average liberal? When I was in college ten years ago, on a super-left campus on which I was a member of the super-super-left, I can promise you that the take would have been anti-colonialist
I think that tells you that the super-super-left has turned it’s back on progressivism and not that the concept of progressivism doesn’t make sense.
Good points. I certainly don’t know how any individual conservative would justify any of their positions. The Fijian example is admittedly a little silly to work with, but based on my experience of contemporary American politics I would bet that the strong majority of Fijian conservatives would not cite Chesterton’s Fence-esque reasons for their position. True, the “thoughtful” or intellectual elite conservatives might, but these individuals are often deemed “thoughtful” and survive in academia or other elite liberal institutions because their style of thinking is at least a little more appealing to their more numerous liberal colleagues.
Good thoughts! One question I had:
Are you sure you know how a conservative would interpret Fijian shark-meat prohibitions for pregnant women? Or the average liberal? When I was in college ten years ago, on a super-left campus on which I was a member of the super-super-left, I can promise you that the take would have been anti-colonialist. Today, among my progressive friends, intersectional feminism and an appreciation for the information inherent in traditional teachings is well-established.
You also have to remember that the women who claim their child would be born with shark scales might just be messing with the anthropologists.
I can’t speak to how conservatives would interpret this with the same depth, because I haven’t spent the same kind of time with them. But if you talk to thoughtful conservatives, they too will often have a great appreciation for traditionalism as a means of learning, and that you can’t always explain the tradition.
Overall, I think the point you’re exploring is that there’s a difference between the argument that’s intellectually strongest and the argument most likely to convince group X. Optimize for persuasive power and truth separately, but invest in both.
One interesting aspect of this line of thinking is that if what you want to do is spread the truth, you might have to shift your approach. Instead of swaying people who disagree with policy X to support it, find people who agree with policy X but for (bad) reason Y, and argue that they should support it for (good) reason Z.
I’m not sure what this looks like in practice, besides what we do here of course. In fact it might be just as hard out there in the wild as convincing people who disagree with policy X to become supporters.
I think that tells you that the super-super-left has turned it’s back on progressivism and not that the concept of progressivism doesn’t make sense.
Good points. I certainly don’t know how any individual conservative would justify any of their positions. The Fijian example is admittedly a little silly to work with, but based on my experience of contemporary American politics I would bet that the strong majority of Fijian conservatives would not cite Chesterton’s Fence-esque reasons for their position. True, the “thoughtful” or intellectual elite conservatives might, but these individuals are often deemed “thoughtful” and survive in academia or other elite liberal institutions because their style of thinking is at least a little more appealing to their more numerous liberal colleagues.