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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15602 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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But people have no fully fledged worldviews to probe. It's a mistaken assumption. We have heuristics and generally try to adapt when new situations arise, by watching the consequences of things, discussing with others etc.

I mean, I personally like to think I have built out some worldviews through argumentation. I am pretty anti-trans at the moment, but that view has changed from being pro-trans when it was the easy default. Most of that change in stance has been from reading things here on the Motte.

I certainly don't claim to have a 100% fully fledged worldview with no logical contradictions. I do have strong feelings about something I find it an interesting exercise to examine my own thoughts and see why I feel that way. I would like to think at least some of my views I've arrived at or changed via argumentation, although I suppose you could just invoke causal determinism and say that it's all unconscious processes. I find that possibility boring to discuss.

Whats the gain if someone says "Under that hypothetical my stance would be X", if the hypothetical is "just a hypothetical"? Clearly there must be some planned rhetorical comeback like "ha! Then your stance is not rational!" or something.

If I ever come out swinging and actually say "ha! your stance is not rational!" without providing counterexamples and countering logic I hope I'd get a warning at least. To me the whole point of this forum is to discuss culture war talking points with logic and reason, instead of actually waging the culture war.

I intuit that when there's pressure to not know man from woman, there's corresponding pressure not to know evil from good.

Yeah, I would agree with the pressure not to know evil from good. That's one of the most negative, and maybe the only seriously negative, aspects of modernity. It is very difficult to know you are living a righteous, moral life, and are a good person.

Although the existence of philosophy as a school of thought makes it so we know for sure people in the past also thought about what a good life is made up of, it seems that in modernity that question is spreading to the common masses. Everyday people now have pressures pulling them in a million different directions, flailing around like marionettes between ideologies and religions. It's a shame.

Benefit from 2,000 years of idiot proofing, because clearly the big brain method can’t handle it.

I’ve had the thought process before, I’ve just never been an atheist, and it’s honestly interesting to me that it occurs to atheists. So thank you for posting it, because it is a reasonable data point for looking at my biases.

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