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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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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.