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Notes -
Sometimes I pose to people a hypothetical: how willing would you be to vote for a political party, if in general they align with you quite well, and endorse all your niche little political positions, and seem to be competent and reasonable... but also, they want to redefine pi to be equal to 3.
That's the only problem. They think pi being 3.141 whatever is a bunch of stupid bullshit for nerds who've never had sex, and life would be much easier if it was 3.
It's an interesting hypothetical to pose, because a lot of people (especially left-liberals, in my experience) do see this as a deal-breaker. I don't know if it would be in actual practice, but they realize that they are supposed to say they believe in science and experts and whatever, and vocalizing that they would support a party committed to something so unambiguously, objectively wrong tugs at them the wrong way. Especially because it is a sort of nonsense idea that would never happen in reality (see a lot of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the red vs blue button debate).
Now, sometimes this is a preamble to me explaining that progressive dogma on trans people sometimes feels like declaring pi to be 3 to me. Or maybe I'm talking to someone more conservative about global warming or vaccines instead. But the point is that it feels very difficult to endorse someone for a leadership position when they are so nakedly willing to stare truth in the eyes and declare it a lie. They are so obviously choosing to preserve the structure of their worldview than admit an uncomfortable truth. That's the kind of thing that can breed the worst kinds of radicalism.
Maybe it irks me to an unreasonable degree, but it seems to me a particularly salient example of this kind of thinking.
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