Oh, is this one of those “We’re mad at our moms” thread? Those tend
to happen periodically, don’t they?
Other than that, this is the type of thing I’ve seen a lot, not only
on TheMotte but on Reddit in general, and even IRL: people getting very
mad at a thing but completely missing why exactly they are mad
about it, prefering instead to use hyperboles like “school is child
abuse.” The craziest thing is that the same people will then
complain that “The Left” or “progressives” is the group that is being
hyperbolic, etc.
It’s like they lack systemic thinking so much that all their
arguments always come back to “well these people must simply be evil”
(in this post, it’s the mother(s)) instead of trying to understand what
went wrong and where. But the most fucked-up thing is that this is
exactly the kind of stuff the SSC blog is about. Preventing this
sort of biased thinking is what Scott set out to do. That a community
created from his own blog’s readers consistently does this is
just proof of the utter failure of Scott’s project.
To be fair, when you’ve already decided that some group of people is evil and you are trying to construct a rational explanation for yourself as to why they must in fact be evil, you literally have to back your logic in to *some* kind of cognitive bias and then stuff it waaaay down the cognitive dissonance hole where it festers and warps the rest of your thinking.
What is unfortunate is watching this happen to certain people in real-time.
Scott himself is extremely biased. I stopped reading years ago because he seemed obsessed with some scary, imaginary political left. He claims to be all about steelmanning, and yet he takes the most uncharitable, neoreactionary conception of the left and acts like that's fair.
Their whole concept of "steelmanning" is bullshit anyway, it inevitably means changing their opponent's argument to fit with their ridiculous worldview rather than engaging with the elements that challenge that worldview.
You say that, and all I can think of is the segment in the latest Contrapoints video where Natalie "abolishes gender" and comments that since "English is a patriarchal language", she'll just have to express herself with "neener neener neener".
And since, as a rationalist, they presumably think religious
indoctrination is also abuse, and 68.6%
of US private schools are religious, I guess 98.6% of US children
are abused.
Oh, is this one of those “We’re mad at our moms” thread? Those tend to happen periodically, don’t they?
Other than that, this is the type of thing I’ve seen a lot, not only on TheMotte but on Reddit in general, and even IRL: people getting very mad at a thing but completely missing why exactly they are mad about it, prefering instead to use hyperboles like “school is child abuse.” The craziest thing is that the same people will then complain that “The Left” or “progressives” is the group that is being hyperbolic, etc.
It’s like they lack systemic thinking so much that all their arguments always come back to “well these people must simply be evil” (in this post, it’s the mother(s)) instead of trying to understand what went wrong and where. But the most fucked-up thing is that this is exactly the kind of stuff the SSC blog is about. Preventing this sort of biased thinking is what Scott set out to do. That a community created from his own blog’s readers consistently does this is just proof of the utter failure of Scott’s project.
Didn’t realize Betsy DeVos was a redditor
[deleted]
I’m extremely a fan of the rationalists rationalizing so hard they end up doing Foucault’s “schools are like prisons” bit
we are all abused by hierarchical systems of oppression. stay woke
And since, as a rationalist, they presumably think religious indoctrination is also abuse, and 68.6% of US private schools are religious, I guess 98.6% of US children are abused.