the gap between pro- and anti-PUA camps on this board … both positions are already entrenched, and large portions of both sides have adopted the other as a Hated Enemy with whom no rational dialogue can be maintained
At the very least this doesn’t seem to be clearly the case. To the extent this is an unstable property influenced by social norms, approved claiming of more certainty than actually present pushes the norms towards establishing that property more strongly. Since what you describe is a bad property (“no rational dialogue can be maintained”), I disapprove of the claim of certainty you’ve made.
Interesting perspective. I think the grandparent should make it fairly clear that I disapprove of this state of affairs and feel that entrenched members of both camps are, at best, wasting their time; on the other hand, I also feel that most of the cultural mass of the problem is out of our hands. This isn’t an endogenous squabble of LW’s; it’s a wider cultural dispute that just tends to instantiate itself here because of our demographic placement (and our taste for metacontrarianism). And since for whatever reason it doesn’t seem to partake of our norm of political detachment, I think we’ll have a very hard time with it unless and until the conventional wisdom shifts one way or another.
At the very least this doesn’t seem to be clearly the case. To the extent this is an unstable property influenced by social norms, approved claiming of more certainty than actually present pushes the norms towards establishing that property more strongly. Since what you describe is a bad property (“no rational dialogue can be maintained”), I disapprove of the claim of certainty you’ve made.
Interesting perspective. I think the grandparent should make it fairly clear that I disapprove of this state of affairs and feel that entrenched members of both camps are, at best, wasting their time; on the other hand, I also feel that most of the cultural mass of the problem is out of our hands. This isn’t an endogenous squabble of LW’s; it’s a wider cultural dispute that just tends to instantiate itself here because of our demographic placement (and our taste for metacontrarianism). And since for whatever reason it doesn’t seem to partake of our norm of political detachment, I think we’ll have a very hard time with it unless and until the conventional wisdom shifts one way or another.
I could be wrong. I hope I am.