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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 4, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What is this kind of thinking called? The gist is "what my opponent should want (which is what I want) according to this value he says he holds rather than what he really wants." I also think of this as the "good republican" as written by aaron sorkin where his republicans that you like are only republican in ways he can agree with or at least understand and the opinions he hates are reserved to bad/stupid characters.

Examples (sorry if these aren't the best, but I think I show the logical twist):

"Democrats should be opposed to abortion because they think everyone has equal value in our society, even the unwanted and unaffordable children of the poor. (Alternately Rawlings Veil)".

"Republicans should support lots of immigration to push down labor costs so they can make more money."

I found myself drifting into this mode of thinking earlier in the gaza war ("Qatar should declare themselves opposed to terrorism and seize the bank accounts of the Hamas leaders because hey free billions and goodwill as the continued reasonable center of the middle east") and I was wondering whether there was a name for it.

In my neighborhood, there's a large park that's full of hobo encampments. They leave garbage everywhere and occasionally harass people. I go to other parks in more-affluent neighborhoods and don't see hobo tents. But my neighborhood is full of black and puerto-rican people, and abuts the local danger-haired queer communist neighborhood, so of course they scream and whine that enforcing the no-camping rule would be mean and fascist, inflicting hobo camps on poor People of Color.

The much shittier park in the black-er neighborhood on the far side of mine, safely far away from Logan Square, is also hobo-tent-free.

Only where there's a confluence of poor people and virtue-signalling do I have to deal with needles and hobo-trash and damaged grass from long-standing tents.

Rawlings

John K. Rawlings, award-winning author of Harry Potter and the Veil of Ignorance.

Nah he makes a baseball glove for when you don't know what position you'll be playing until you get to the field.

Hidden premise maybe. In both cases one assumes: In the democrat example you assume they believe a fetus counts as a person (this is the crux of the argument for a reason among some.) In the republican argument you assume the motivation for money is the only and ultimate motivator for republicans.

Yet both of these seem different than the good republican example you gave of Sorkin's writing.