What constitutes an “uncomfortable thought”? For some people, thinking about unfinished business does that, or thinking about the gap between one’s goals/values and current behavior, or thinking about recent social missteps.
...people often change their political philosophies as they get older - and not just in lock-step with changes in their moral intuitions. Experience matters. Arguments and evidence matter. Reflection matters. Our ideas about how to make the world a better place aren't frozen in time and temperament. Of course we can't escape our psychology - but our psychology is not the absolute ruler of our politics.
...check out those libertarians: like liberals, they don't care much about Ingroup Loyalty, Respect for Authority, or Sanctity/Purity. Unlike liberals, Harm does not figure prominently in their moral universe. So what matters to libertarians?
The theory was never intended to be limited to five moral intuitions and researchers have continued to consider additional intuition candidates. Liberty is gaining acceptance as a sixth moral intuition. Conceived both as a freedom from (interference) and a freedom to (pursue happiness), Liberty is especially meaningful to libertarians. (Duh).
...pundits and partisans have embraced the idea that conservatives have one moral profile, liberals another. To simplify: conservatives are heavy on Loyalty, Sanctity, and Authority and liberals are big time in the Care department. I know many people who are quite taken with this apparent division of moral labor.
...is it actually possible to see the whole truth and nothing but the truth? How do you know? Doesn’t everyone have a point of view? Why do you think some people can see the whole truth/elephant?
It’s only when we're stopped in our tracks that we realize we were looking down the road we were traveling.
...we need true competition of ideas, where our own cherished certainties are challenged and the challenge can’t be ignored, because the power dynamics are fluid and no one party has a monopoly on political power.
According to personality psychologist Robert McCrae, openness to experience is a broad personality construct that “implies both receptivity to many varieties of experience and a fluid and permeable structure of consciousness”
The ideological mind is a fortress, ever vigilant against infiltration and treason. The ideological mind keeps its eye on the prize, keen to weed out those who impede progress. And so we have Establishment Democrats, Wall Street Democrats, and now Corporate Democrats: the Left's New Despicables.
Being a skeptic doesn’t mean you don’t care about the environment, wildlife, air quality, or water quality. The idea of being less dependent on fossil fuels is appealing regardless of how you feel about climate change. You don’t have to be worried about global warming to be in favor of reducing the cost of fuel through greater efficiencies.
Parry's right: you're not going to get anywhere with doom-and-gloom scenarios. Environmentalists have been predicting imminent catastrophe for decades and they’ve been wrong again and again. Skeptics are well aware of this track record of crying wolf while claiming the support of science.
Why do we signal virtue? Is it to give each other courage: you are not alone. I stand up for the good and the true - you can, too. Is it to do good by building collective confidence to fight the forces of evil - in other words, a tactic to combat evil? Is it a form of bragging? Is it to let your family, friends, and neighbors know that you're not one of Them?
...hear them out, ask follow-up questions, and avoid knee-jerk rebuttals of their points. If you want to show respect for a person’s position, you ask them what exactly that position is and how they have arrived at it.
Thoughts are inchoate until expressed in the head or the world. Expression generates thoughts from patterns of spreading activation.
The idea of reflection is Cartesian to its core: a stand-alone consciousness, calmly observing the parade of thoughts and feelings, assuming a higher vantage point, drawing lessons and extracting principles: a wise Self.
Sometimes the straw man is a “hollow man”, i.e., a complete fabrication of the opponent’s views. These are pretty easy to refute, since they can’t be supported by actual evidence. Harder to refute are strawman arguments based on half-truths.
Other countries, including Germany and South Korea, have added far more industrial robots per worker than the US over the same time period and yet have lost fewer manufacturing jobs than we have.
So it's more accurate to say humans are prediction machines: "devices that constantly try to stay one step ahead of the breaking waves of sensory stimulation, by actively predicting the incoming flow." (Clark, 2016)
The urge to label hovers before the stream of consciousness, ready to take the wind out of its sails. Of course, the weather's always changing and the wind often comes out of nowhere.