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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36543 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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There needs to be a taxonomical distinction between political views and what I have recently decided to call "normative views". Political views relate to government policy, and normative views relate to the way we use language and the way we treat each other, i.e. social norms. Whether we define racism as racial discrimination or "prejudice plus power" is a normative issue, as is whether it's ever okay to misgender someone. These issues are only political insofar as they can be affected at the ballot box, and they generally cannot. (Public schools teaching CRT is an example that you can go after at the ballot box.)

So is this demand normative or political?

Compare the Scottpost about taxonomies of mental disorders. If you want a document to inform policy, it has to account for normative preferences.

It's a great post, but my reaction was "Yes, any personality trait that anyone could conceivably want medical intervention for should be considered a mental illness, and anyone who has a problem with that is the real baddie for stigmatizing mental illness."

And.. you know, this IS a normative demand I have a preference for having one word that exclusively refers to things that involve government policy and a different word for things that involve individual choices. I want people to voluntarily start using this word. That's normative.

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