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Intellectual consensus isn’t the same thing as ideological conformity. What separates one from the other is whether or not there’s a forum for open debate and airing out disagreements. Sure I’ve noticed some of the latter here when certain topics come to the fore but on the whole, TM is absolutely ‘nothing’ like Reddit and thankfully so. You can still feel when you can’t discuss a certain issue because it grates against the preferences of people here. Most noticeably as well the phenomenon of downvoting someone’s comments while offering no comment response to you that disagree with anything you’ve said. Disapproval still exists. LW was considered for a long time to be a very “cold” and unwelcoming place by others. But it was a forum for very serious discussion. A lot of the topics there demanded a level of engagement I wasn’t willing to invest in. KF and PCM were communities I felt much more at home in when I felt like checking them out because they allowed much greater latitude in letting off and occasionally being a smart ass. Not all environments are equal. TM is very unfit for my usual style of argumentation which is to incorporate irony and sarcasm amid intellectual replies, but I’ve learned how to deal with it.
In a way you can’t avoid convergence of belief in certain domains. Especially where there are clear cut right and wrong answers waiting to be discovered. The rest is just open exploration. Evidence is found to be of the Bayesians, precisely that kind of evidence you only ever expect to find on one side an argument. Otherwise what are you expecting people to say? “Here’s a knockdown objection I haven’t accepted yet?” If you were capable of saying that then there’s clearly a problem with you. The best I can do is present you with
strawman argumentsall sorts of weak objections. And to that end, being “closed minded” isn’t a criticism because the same argument can be made the other way. It’s very easy. Whenever you’re faced with something you really don’t want to believe you simply say “… but how can I really know this? Isn’t science supposed to consider all the answers?…” and if that’s as far as you can bring yourself to a conclusion, where you can’t close your mind any further, then that’s the same thing as having made up your mind isn’t it? If you refuse to close it. “The point of having an open mind like having an open mouth is that it occasionally closes on something solid.”More options
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