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> Centralized and diffused power are each vulnerable in their own ways. Of course that's true. But one of them is worse. > You'd generally expect people with

> Centralized and diffused power are each vulnerable in their own ways. Of course that's true. But one of them is worse. > You'd generally expect people with more training to make better decisions than people with less training. When it comes to politics, morality, and judgement, we cannot defer to an expert class. It's everyone's responsibility to be "trained" and make good decisions. > There's no a priori reason to believe that each political tendency is equally attached to reality. That's certainly true. For instance, post-modernism, the foundational religion of the far left, rejects truth, objectivity, and the scientific method: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3463968/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3463968/ I 100% believe that one side is far less grounded in reality than the other. I still would prefer a diffused speech enforcement system to one that allowed a few "experts" to elevate my opinion and suppress the opinion of those I disagree with.

sunshowers 2y ago
Postmodernism is not the foundational religion of the far left, whatever that means. To the extent that any philosophy is that, it is Marxism, a kind of modernism. Postmodernism is explicitly and inherently anti-Marxist. I think postmodernism and post-structuralism have useful things to say around map-territory relationships, but the extreme "there is no objective reality" form of postmodernism is plainly false. And I share your concern about public perception of GMOs being wrong. I'd recommend checking out Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. There are deep insights there about how society has replaced ground-level (i.e. objective) truths with symbols and signs, and there's a lot of discussion about map-territory relationships in there. You might enjoy it!
- PathOfEclipse 2y ago
  > To the extent that any philosophy is that, it is Marxism I actually don't think that's the case at all. Post-modernism is far more prevalent today than Marxism and even more dangerous. > Postmodernism is explicitly and inherently anti-Marxist. Some post-modernists may claim that, but I don't think it's true in practice or even in theory. If anything, post-modernism is, in some ways or facets, an evolution of Marxism beyond economics: https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/postmodernism_does_it_have_marxist_or_historicist_origins https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/postmodernism_does_it_have...
  - sunshowers 2y ago
    Would strongly recommend checking out Baudrillard's ideas. I am the complete opposite of a relativist when it comes to the territory, but clearly the maps we make of that territory are influenced by social and cultural history. So they are worth questioning or "deconstructing". The main way the right is unmoored from reality is in saying that the maps that have traditionally existed are the territory, or at least are indistinguishable from it. That is plainly incorrect, for the simple reason that a faithful model of reality must be as complicated as reality itself. And if you insist that your simplistic view is the right one, the inevitable result is that you'll violently reshape the territory to fit the map (which is what the current regime has been doing).
    - PathOfEclipse 2y ago
      Thanks for the info. Can you give an example of someone on the right mistaking a symbol for reality? I've seen, I believe, the opposite in play. I've seen, for instance, thinkers like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pageau argue the exact opposite; that a symbol is an approximation but also that it's utility is tied to fidelity with reality. And, over-simplistic viewpoints are found in abundance on the left. As an example, a leftist over-simplifies that all group disparities must be caused by systemic injustice. This is deeply untrue, and, for instance, Sowell's "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics" is a treatise on the myriad of complexities that can result in group disparity that have nothing to do with social oppression or even occur in spite of it. But the SJW has a "map" of the territory, and it gives a seemingly univariate explanation for everything.
      - sunshowers 2y ago
        > Can you give an example of someone on the right mistaking a symbol for reality? Gender. The observed behavior among humans is clearly very complex, but the right keeps insisting that its binary/immutable map is the territory. This leads to recent moves like the administration saying that trans people are inherently dishonest and saying false things -- which is a claim about objective reality, and specifically that the simplistic map they have is reality. Note, I am not saying that gender is just a social construct. It isn't, there are clearly deep affinities and anti-affinities related to gender built into our brain wiring. But it's not as simple as the right makes it out to be either. > As an example, a leftist over-simplifies that all group disparities must be caused by systemic injustice. As someone on the left I don't believe this at all. I think systemic injustice explains a large part of disparities but not all of them. I'm not a fan of univariate or monocausal explanations in general.

sunshowers 2y ago

Postmodernism is not the foundational religion of the far left, whatever that means. To the extent that any philosophy is that, it is Marxism, a kind of modernism. Postmodernism is explicitly and inherently anti-Marxist. I think postmodernism and post-structuralism have useful things to say around map-territory relationships, but the extreme "there is no objective reality" form of postmodernism is plainly false. And I share your concern about public perception of GMOs being wrong. I'd recommend checking out Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. There are deep insights there about how society has replaced ground-level (i.e. objective) truths with symbols and signs, and there's a lot of discussion about map-territory relationships in there. You might enjoy it!

PathOfEclipse 2y ago
> To the extent that any philosophy is that, it is Marxism I actually don't think that's the case at all. Post-modernism is far more prevalent today than Marxism and even more dangerous. > Postmodernism is explicitly and inherently anti-Marxist. Some post-modernists may claim that, but I don't think it's true in practice or even in theory. If anything, post-modernism is, in some ways or facets, an evolution of Marxism beyond economics: https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/postmodernism_does_it_have_marxist_or_historicist_origins https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/postmodernism_does_it_have...
- sunshowers 2y ago
  Would strongly recommend checking out Baudrillard's ideas. I am the complete opposite of a relativist when it comes to the territory, but clearly the maps we make of that territory are influenced by social and cultural history. So they are worth questioning or "deconstructing". The main way the right is unmoored from reality is in saying that the maps that have traditionally existed are the territory, or at least are indistinguishable from it. That is plainly incorrect, for the simple reason that a faithful model of reality must be as complicated as reality itself. And if you insist that your simplistic view is the right one, the inevitable result is that you'll violently reshape the territory to fit the map (which is what the current regime has been doing).
  - PathOfEclipse 2y ago
    Thanks for the info. Can you give an example of someone on the right mistaking a symbol for reality? I've seen, I believe, the opposite in play. I've seen, for instance, thinkers like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pageau argue the exact opposite; that a symbol is an approximation but also that it's utility is tied to fidelity with reality. And, over-simplistic viewpoints are found in abundance on the left. As an example, a leftist over-simplifies that all group disparities must be caused by systemic injustice. This is deeply untrue, and, for instance, Sowell's "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics" is a treatise on the myriad of complexities that can result in group disparity that have nothing to do with social oppression or even occur in spite of it. But the SJW has a "map" of the territory, and it gives a seemingly univariate explanation for everything.
    - sunshowers 2y ago
      > Can you give an example of someone on the right mistaking a symbol for reality? Gender. The observed behavior among humans is clearly very complex, but the right keeps insisting that its binary/immutable map is the territory. This leads to recent moves like the administration saying that trans people are inherently dishonest and saying false things -- which is a claim about objective reality, and specifically that the simplistic map they have is reality. Note, I am not saying that gender is just a social construct. It isn't, there are clearly deep affinities and anti-affinities related to gender built into our brain wiring. But it's not as simple as the right makes it out to be either. > As an example, a leftist over-simplifies that all group disparities must be caused by systemic injustice. As someone on the left I don't believe this at all. I think systemic injustice explains a large part of disparities but not all of them. I'm not a fan of univariate or monocausal explanations in general.