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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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It's kind of weird to treat an empirical question as a competition and focusing on the sportsmanship and conduct of each side. Ultimately the tactics used in various debates have no effect on the underlying reality. The earth orbits the sun with no regard to the good or bad conduct of people who profess heliocentrism or geocentrism.

A far more symmetric view: Leftist inclined people want to create racial equality of outcomes, and they therefore boost whichever kinds of rationalizations they can come up with for the achievability and justification of such equality. Rightist inclined people want to preserve racial inequality of outcomes, and they therefore boost whichever kinds of rationalizations they can come up with for the unachievability of equality and justification of inequality.

I just want to know the truth and for the truth to be known. I want policy arguments built on false factual premises to fail, and I want policies built on true factual premises to succeed. But your characterization affords no place for genuine epistemic rationalists; it assumes that everyone is a contestant in some kind of dumb zero-sum game, engaging in that game only as a means of influencing policy in their favored direction.

🤷 I also want to know the truth; what triggered this discussion was mainly that the other post had been placed in the best-of section of this website. Take it up with the moderators if you think the conduct of each side is irrelevant.

Though I don't think the conduct is irrelevant, because of Aumann's agreement theorem. If there was a side that conducted itself well, you could just copy your opinion from what they say. Because they're not behaving well, you can't do that. That seems like important information to know.

Also I wouldn't say I don't have any space for people who want to know the truth:

There's some honest people on either side who have been swept up in the drama, but in terms of the direction of the energy which drives the whole debate, this is what lies underneath it.

Though I don't think the conduct is irrelevant, because of Aumann's agreement theorem.

Can you give an example of an issue that is the subject of ongoing political controversy in which you believe the assumptions of Aumann's agreement theorem are satisfied?

Disagreements where Aumann's agreement theorem's assumptions are satisfied rapidly disappear, so whenever you talk about persistent controversies, they will not be satisfied. However, it is still relevant for me to know whether they fail to be satisfied because one side if obstinate, or because both sides are bad, as if it's only one side that's bad then I can just copy my views from the other side.

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