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Hlynka needs to feel he's somehow different from the rest of us.
That said, there were several high-profile users pushing the mainstream line.
It’s bizarre how he manages to conflate one of the most reflexively contrarian groups with the mainstream they constantly bitch about.
Does the mainstream think we’re mainstream? We were forced to flee our home more than once because the mainstream started encroaching. Neither them nor us think we're mainstream. What does it mean if enemies agree on a particular point? The argument's also valid for his usual claim that we're all progressives or something.
At least give us an example, the mythical group that is appropriately skeptical of the mainstream.
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Would you even disagree with that?
Of course. The most flak he gets is for pretending his unremarkable, motte-popular opinions make him the lone, brave prole telling us over-educated sheep what’s what. Case in point : Airing some standard anti-mainstream talking point we all love while assigning the opinion of a guy called "token_progressive" to the sub as a whole.
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Yeah. He has a few differences of opinion (as do I, BTW), but I think he fits right in. His antagonism towards educated city-dwelling alt-right left-wing progressives seems a bit forced.
'Fit in' isn't the same as 'different from,' which seems a bit of a motte and bailey. Who, specifically, is like Hylenka in nature and style, including his defining experiences that he regularly admits to, his personality and style, and his willingness to be direct to the point of offense?
Hlynka's never claimed to be a unique opinion, to my knowledge.
Everybody's different in nature and style from everybody else here. When I originally said "different from", I meant a fundamental worldview difference (by which I don't even mean a difference of opinion, but a huge difference in how he looks at, and understands the world). At least I thought that's what he's getting at with his inferential distance series, but every time he posts one of those I'm left scratching my head as to where is the distance suppose to be.
That's what makes it an inferential distance. I've been running into the same problem for a while. It's not hard to show that there is a difference; see the conversation starting here for a recent example. What's hard is being understood across the gap, because there's a massive number of assumptions that aren't shared, and so can't be used to build a common understanding. What you get is people either rounding you to agreement, or people assuming you're talking out your ass. Neither are productive, and solutions have to date been elusive. I've got an effort-post about a third of the way written that I'm hoping might help, we'll see how it goes if I can get it finished.
The first time I heard the term was a progressive in our community saying something like "if you believe this, the inferential distance is so great that I don't think I can bridge the gap". I don't remember what "this" was referring to, but it was something so basic that it was obvious to me it will be hard for a person that believes it to understand where person who believes the opposite of it is coming from.
By contrast any time Hlynka tries to show where the inferential gap is, I'm just flabbergasted at why he thinks the modal Mottizen disagrees with him on it. I'm sure there are a handful of Rousseauians running around here somewhere, but to use that as an example of core disagreement from which all misunderstandings between us and him sprout from is absurd. People might not hop on the Hobbes train, but I'm pretty sure the majority would at least agree Rousseau was wrong.
That, combined with his characterization of specific majority opinions here ("the vast majority of users here would have dismissed as an absurd conspiracy theory") makes me think that either the inferential gap does not exist, and the conflict between us and him is imagined, or it does exist, and he's failing to understand us at least as much as we're misunderstanding him.
Is that an example of inferential distance, or an example of object level disagreement? I feel like "Enlightenment bad" is something reasonable people can disagree over. I can see why the exchange you linked was frustrating to you, but I don't think it's due to some fundamental misunderstanding, as much as simple stubbornness that often comes up in internet debates.
I am looking forward to your effort post on the subject though, maybe you'll have better luck shedding light on this.
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