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I've ridden a lot of subways and never seen a schizophrenic attack anyone, so I'm going to be reluctant to agree that I have some Ivory-tower blindspot in my own knowledge of the subject. Be loud and annoying and smelly, sure, but that's not the same thing, especially when we're talking about justifications for killing them.
I would agree that I have a blindspot to some type of worldview where that is a default assumption about how the world works, where there's a belief that deadly attacks on subways happen all the time and it's a huge failing that the government hasn't stopped them and every citizen needs to be armed and ready to deploy deadly force against them at all times. Or whatever your actually position here is, for being the only concrete example you give you really don't spend much time outlining it.
But I really do believe that worldview is just factually wrong, my personal experiences and those of other people I know who ride the subway seem to confirm it, I'm not aware of any stats that contradict it and if they were shockingly strong I would sort of expect to know it.
Which brings us back to the point that it seems like you're making two different claims here, 1. that liberals are blind to the ways that non-liberals view and think about the world, in ways that lead to communication breakdowns and strife, and 2. that liberals are blind to portions of empirical reality that they can't/won't acknowledge.
1 is trivially true, and I would say fully bi-directional; it's just a description of what the culture war is, more or less, or even just what tribalism is more generally.
2 requires actual examples to back it up, and I don't buy it from the only one you give.
Genuine question - have you ever been in a fight or other violent situation that escalated suddenly? Not like a shoving match that turned into a sort of wrestling match with a few frat boy haymakers thrown in. A real unexpected fight. Maybe someone tried to mug you.
Because even though I haven't personally seen a schizophrenic on the subway get to the point of committing attempted murder, I routinely saw the near potential for it. As in, being fully aware that that smelly weird dude could be hammering on some passer-by within 5 seconds. Why/how? My own personal experience with violence.
As a good research exercise, go watch some videos on the "Police Activity" channel on YouTube. Choose any that involve a shooting. These showcase just how quickly a "calm scene" can turn into dozens of shots fired. This will also show the utter lunacy of ideas around "warning shots" or "deescalation" by cops.
A friend has a good metaphor about human (esp male) latent violence - it's like a garage door spring. 99% of the time, it's this utterly forgettable thing that you are completely unaware of even as you are very close to it. In the rare situation in which it makes itself known, it is incredibly fast and violent (garage door springs can fucking end you).
But that explosive lethal potential is always there. But you don't see it, do you? Isn't that exactly what @HlynkaCG said?
Yes, I've been in situations that escalated to real violence, none where anyone was killed but a few were people were stabbed and got an ambulance.
I don't let it make me paranoid and frightened every time I ride the subway, I don't let it make me support policies that aren't supported by statistics or utilitarianism.
Of course the potential for violence is latent in any situation involving traditional-gender-norm men... feminists have been pointing that out for a very long time, I'm sympathetic to their position. The way that this makes weaker and more vulnerable people afraid and deferential even when violence is not explicitly happening in the moment is part of what they mean by 'patriarchy'; the way that this makes people suspicious of and pre-emptively violent towards men who are doing nothing wrong is part of what they mean by 'toxic masculinity' and 'the patriarchy hurts men too'.
The fact that the right thinks the left is blind to the fact that the latent potential for violence exists around all men, when this has been central to feminist theory for so long, kind of strikes me as one of those things that happens when you accept the toxoplasmic strawman version of the other side's position, instead of exploring that community and literature for yourself. I expect myself to be wrong about a lot of right-wing positions in this approximate way, and I feel like I strongly observe this happening whenever I use feminist academic terminology on non-left spaces. /shrug.
But, again, as I understand Hlynka, they're not just claiming a difference in perspective and worldview like what would happen if you're subconsciously aware of the potential for violence in non-violent situations. They're claiming an empirical failure to accurately understand and predict the world, in ways that would justify things like applauding pre-emptive vigilantism and calling for more of it.
And I'm saying, no, I don't buy that on the empirical facts and statistics, and no, I don't buy that on some experience-driven 'sense' of how 'dangerous' the world is that exists outside the data itself.
I think you might want to take a little peek at the theory of black swan events. "Stats say this crazy man only has a 1% chance of ending my life. No need to worry!"
You mean the philosophy that leads to eugenics and "global optimization via local genocide." Fuck outta here with that nonsense.
Spoke too soon. Fuck outta here with THAT nonsense.
@Mods: I'll self-penalize here with a one day self-ban for this "boo outgroup." I should've not engaged. But I failed.
Is this going to be propped up as another example of "guesswho baiting people with bad faith" and used against him, while right-wingers say more vile shit on the regular and stay untouched just because their opponents don't flip out on them?
"Saying vile shit" is not what we mod for. "Flipping out on people" is.
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