At a friend’s birthday party a few years back, I wound up trapped in a conversation about whether you could call someone racist. It started with voter ID laws, but the position wound up being defended to “A politician who courts the opinions and votes of racists (self-identified), who acts in their interests, and consistently gets elected on the platforms that most racists support cannot be called a racist”.
I remember thinking at the time that at that point, what did it even matter if he was secretly truly not racist in his heart. I was, however, quite drunk at the time and wandered off to talk to other people.
What I found weird was that this guy was apparently fine with hanging out with all these trans people and I just kinda assumed he was progressive of some sort. He was part of an older polycule (as is tradition).
I know he definitely subbed to LessWrong and SSC, but I didn’t really think much of it. But apparently, after reading a lot of posts here, it’s a thing that you shouldn’t call racists racist because it shuts down “the conversation”. I don’t think we actually reached the point of “I’m talking to this politician” because we were discussing electoral political strategy.
At least locally there’s some following, though all the ones I personally know are very uncharismatic when it comes to espousing these beliefs. At least two of them live on welfare while arguing for the abolition of welfare (and democracy). One of them firmly believes that if they write an enormous essay espousing the values of centrist liberalism as though us dirty lefties haven’t heard of it before, they will eventually convince their (hotter) friends of its merits.
perfection
Is this critique really all that different from the “you criticize society yet you participate in society?” Is it any different from “you criticize capitalism yet you have a cell phone?”
SOrt of a similar situation tnight. A big thing about this sub is a sort of superiority/ dunking on rationalists. Popular rationalists are often STEM and the people here are literally often PHDs in fields like anthropology.
I don’t have much education so don’t have the confidence of either group and it can be weird to get stuck in thr middlr.
Why are you telling us this?
Cool story bro. Next time, more dragons.
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