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Basic Principles and Useful Heuristics
Over the multi-month exchange, this individual mocked and misrepresented counter-arguments and never budged from her original position. Nothing could penetrate her fortress of moral certainty or widen her perspective beyond a narrow moral reasoning. She repeatedly brushed off considerations such as evidence of culpability and constitutional protections as nothing but a smokescreen used by bad people to hide their bad values.
“We cannot ask authors to embrace intellectual humility and calibration unless the editors are prepared to follow through—to prefer manuscripts with well-calibrated claims to those that overclaim.…unwarranted bold claims will harm chances of acceptance, and exaggeration will be considered a potential basis for desk rejection. We are looking for excellent research, but we expect even the best research to have flaws, and we want those flaws to be factored into the whole manuscript, including the conclusions drawn.” - Simine Vazire, Editor-in-Chief, Psychological Science
A final question: assuming the not-so-grim future is plausible, what needs to happen between now and then to make it a reality?
One would think if people truly cared about achieving a valued social good - say, the elimination of poverty - they would also sweat over the details as to how to achieve this social good without jeopardizing other social goods. Which means they and their shared-values fellows would be having robust and thoughtful arguments on policy, no consensus expected.
I am not quoting Paxton as the ultimate authority on fascism. No scholar is. Historians and political scientists (aka “experts”) differ in their definitions of fascism and opinions of Trump. However, I have noticed that definitions of fascism have morphed over time, perhaps repurposed to boost present-day relevance and create a tighter fit with current figures or political movements.
According the the College Board, first-time full-time students at public two-year colleges have been receiving enough grant aid to cover their tuition and fees since 2010, on average.
It’s almost Thanksgiving! Time to celebrate! In my case, that means less writing and more charts.
But the fact the some types are strongly Democrat or Republican doesn’t mean that most Democrats or Republicans belong to those types. No type claims the majority of Democrats, Independents or Republicans. For example, less than half the Democrats in the NORC survey were Classical Liberals and less than half the Republicans were Mostly MAGAs.
Grouping people by types also runs the risk of seeing individuals as static, unchanging essences. People and patterns change. Within-group affinities and between-group differences may weaken over time, eventually rendering a whole typology obsolete. But the typologies keep coming, partly because humans love to categorize and partly because new typologies unsettle our certainties and assumptions and help us see the world with fresh eyes. Case in point: the Five Types of Americans, as developed by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.
When NORC framed the American Dream as a general rule - working hard leads to success or each generation will be better off than the last - respondents were deeply pessimistic. However, they were less gloomy about their own personal futures.
Sensing danger increases vigilance and vigilant behavior discourages criminals by reducing opportunities (easy victims) and increasing costs (time, effort) relative to payoff (money, status, sex). Here are some examples of what I’m talking about…
I’ve often seen “perception” contrasted with “reality” as if they were mutually exclusive: perception versus reality. But perceptions don’t erupt out of nothing. They have some foundation in the real world. In the case of perceived public safety, that foundation includes…
If one wants to return to an issue in a conversation, one can simply say, “I’d like to return to subject xyz…” and then proceed to restate and elaborate the original subject. There’s no need to label the other person’s imputed intentions. And if that person keeps changing the subject, mention that and ask them why.
So, “emphasizing the absurdity and inequity of singling out a person to rake over the coals” for a common behavior is justified whataboutism? Basically, that’s the defense of pointing out double-standards and hypocrisy, which is usually condemned as just plain ole whataboutism
…That is a pattern I’ve seen for years, both in the debate club and on the internet. Does that mean accusations of whataboutism are mostly attempts to maintain partisan narratives and preempt challenges to those narratives?
The term "whataboutism" first appeared in print in 1978, but wasn’t much used until 2007-2008, when British journalist Edward Lucas popularized the term in The Economist. The use of whataboutism in American political discourse increased sharply around the 2016 US presidential election…
The whys and what-fors of whataboutism accusations are the two sides of speech motivation: belief and purpose. Behind every utterance is a felt-truth - which may or may not be conscious or expressed - but the reason we actually say something is to achieve a goal. So what felt-truths are behind accusations of whataboutism, and what do the accusers hope to accomplish?
The accusation of whataboutism often stings, because it implies a moral deficiency in the accused. It’s less about logic and evidence than the accuser’s moral convictions.
But how do we know another’s intent? What appears to be an attempt to change the subject may actually be an attempt to improve the quality of a discussion, to add proper context or examine the speaker’s assumptions. Besides, what’s wrong with trying to redirect attention (“distract”) from a topic if one takes issue with how a claim is presented or defended and wants to sort that out first? And what’s wrong with pointing out double standards or hypocrisy?
So people go along to get along and cultures ossify. But every once in a while, alternative perspectives break through and the whole thing crumples, sometimes very quickly. That may be happening now, in America.