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Yeah because MAGA folks are just tribal conflict theorists. Expecting any sort of nuanced or balanced take from them, any sort of principles, is something they shed long ago in their quest for vengeance and power. And the apple does not fall far from the tree here, the mirror behavior is the TDS or Prog folks who show volcanic rage at this but hardly care when its some progressive causes. Trying to hold either to a set of principles is futile because they have none.
A more accurate way to phrase this would be "principles are clearly not adaptive in the current sociopolitical enviornment."
This is not a mistake blues or reds are making. Principles are not, in fact, adaptive, and fixing that is not something individuals or even individual tribes can accomplish, and probably is not something that can be accomplished at all in a values-incoherent environment.
Sure, I've never been accused of having good phrasing. Other people always word things better than I can.
Are principles ever adaptive? A core part of the value of principles is that they act as a very costly signal. If it were easy to have them, or they are adaptive to an environment it wouldn't be a very good signal. People would adopt them for the adaptability. The value of having principles is that it communicates that people can trust you, and depend on you. Regardless of the shifting tides of the sociopolitical currents.
Absolutely, in a values-coherent environment.
Sure. What they are supposed to signal is "I am making a significant sacrifice to maintain something we both care about". But this assumes "we both" actually do care about it. Signals are for communication; you don't need signals to draw your own conclusions. If the response is "I don't care about the thing you are maintaining, and will not sacrifice to maintain it", then the question becomes whether solo maintenance is worth it (probably not), and whether solo maintenance is even possible (probably not).
Yes, and the result is that rule-following becomes normal and expected, and rule-breaking becomes unusual and disturbing.
Many people claim a principle of following the law. Few people will actually follow a law that demands they docilly allow a subset of their neighbors to murder them and their family with machetes. Most curious! How can we explain this inconsistency? Assuming such a law were passed legally, it would in fact be a law, so shouldn't they follow it? Don't they have principles? Well, no. Humans are human. They are not going to cooperate in upholding a system that they perceive to be ruinously hostile to their interests. Society depends on a supermajority perceiving it to be strongly positive-sum. If you want to continue to have a society, you need to maintain that perception. If you fail to maintain that perception, appeals to rules or norms or principles will not save you.
Very, very few principles are actually worth unlimited commitment. If you want a society based on principles which receive unlimited commitment, it is going to look very different than our current arrangement.
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