You have a point with this snip, but I would not go that far. People are born with a certain size of us vs them. Small us/big them → conservative. Big us / small them → liberal / progressive.
People can choose to stretch themsvles in different ways. Witness the vast number of people born into religion and filled full of it as kids, who happily abandon it later in life. Or vice versa.
The lazy way is to follow your innate instincts. The intelligent way is to examine those instincts and the facts on the ground, and develop your own rational belief system in response.
Saying one has “no choice” is a gross overstatement. Mentally lazy people elect not to consider their options. Mentally acute people do consider their options.
I have no idea if any of this is true, beyond seeing a famous (and commonly misinterpreted) heatmap of extent of moral concern. Do you have any evidence for these claims?
And having done that, can you choose to change your conclusions? You can engage in good faith, and look at all the evidence. You can’t choose to believe evidence that isn’t convincing to you, or to disbelieve evidence that is.
I have the experience of changing my beliefs on both religion and politics, and I’d say my (lack of) religious beliefs are far more in line with my innate instincts and far more acceptable in my social circles, while my current political beliefs are something I accepted reluctantly, knowing they’d subject me to stigma. But in neither case can I choose to believe differently just because some other people disagree and disapprove.
Disagree. I think broadsides should be acceptable in GD. Because motive matters. Banning such discussion would not aid the fight against ignorance.
Are broadsides problematic? Sure. If a volunteer mod tells you to tone things down, should you tone it down? Yes, if you’re not a jerk. @Der_Trihs provides one example: he delivers a lot of broadsides but he always obeys mod instruction. For a while mod instruction made his participation in GD untenable, so he pivoted away. That’s the way things should work.
LHoD suggested that specificity is best practice (though some forms of specificity are left to the pit). But given that broadsides are allowed, what is the best practice response? I would talk about the problems with imputing motive. Is the accuser a mind reader? Does his broadside apply to all members of the group? Really? What’s the evidence for that? How is the claim substantiated if at all? Better: what’s the counter-hypothesis with regards to motive?
Any proper characterization of motive will be inherently tentative, unless backed by some pretty dense analysis of polling. Which is rarely if ever done. Proper characterizations of behavior are another matter. Broadsides can be legitimately sustained in those cases, at least hypothetically.
Worth acknowledging that impinging motive is very much frowned upon within professional scientific discussion. That’s not what we’re doing here: we’re amateurs.