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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33358 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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So people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest? I grant that it's true that Natalie is unlikely to be persuaded to the belief that she is a man, but does that mean we should automatically disregard her arguments for why she is a woman? Can we disregard any arguments about the existence of God from religious people? Arguments about why cancel culture is bad from people who have been cancelled?

This seems to be really reaching for things that weren't in the above comment. It's not that people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest, it's that they can't be trusted to do so. That doesn't mean we should automatically disregard her arguments, but it does provide one explanation why her arguments are so bad when judged on its own merits, in this particular context. And it means one should be extra skeptical of their arguments and look out for sleights of hand that allow them to gerrymander the desired results, since the desired results are the only allowable ones that the person is likely to engineer their arguments around.

Can we disregard any arguments about the existence of God from religious people?

Presuming "religious people" refers to people who lack the ability to be convinced of the nonexistence of God, rather than merely people who follow or believe in some religion, we can't automatically disregard such arguments, but certainly it would explain why their arguments are so bad.

Arguments about why cancel culture is bad from people who have been cancelled?

Being "canceled" doesn't automatically imply that one has a dogmatic belief that "cancel culture" is bad. Plenty of people who have been "canceled" believe that their own "cancellation" is bad for the specifics around their own "cancellation" but that the general concept is okay. Heck, I think JK Rowling is one of them, though I'm not sure she's made any specific comments about "cancel culture" in the past. So this analogy doesn't really work.

Sure they can, but it's a big ask. IMO discourse is at its best when everyone just lays out their bias and self-interest in clear terms and stands by it. Being honest about your stake is marginally easier than trying to represent someone else's. And representing everyone's at once, as many demand as the baseline standard for decency, seems outright impossible to me.

So people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest?

I am sure it's possible, but most people really can't. Putting emotion and personal stake aside is a really hard thing to do, especially when your peers have been whipping fervor into you by drumbeating night and day that any opposition to you is tantamount to attempted genocide.

So, no, the vast majority of people are motivated reasoning at all times. This is usually okay if we can pit the two opposing motivated reasoners against each other on equal ground, but this is less and less possible these days thanks to the proliferation of biased platforms and speakers who aren't at all interested in engaging with anything except an echo chamber.

No, my point is that if you see someone who is otherwise intelligent and clear-thinking make uncharacteristic fallacies and bad arguments on a specific topic, and that topic is something that they have a strong vested interest in, and they did not argue themselves into that vested interest, then you should have a strong prior that their vested interest is causing their bad arguments.

I will note that the best religious apologists tend to be converts. This is not a coincidence.

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