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Notes -
This example fits the following narrative pattern:
An institution X used to have broad support, but now we* recognize it as harmful or bad, though they* still defend it.
Breaking news: evidence E that X was far worse than we* knew! (But not worse than we* can imagine!) So X was altogether evil!!
(Whisper among us*:)
"Isn't that evidence kind of weak? I mean, X still evil, but ..."
"Shh! X was evil, don't undermine the narrative! They* will latch on to it!"
[* For some variation of we and they.]
Once the narrative transitions from "X bad" to "X evil", any questioning of evidence E that precipitated that transition is questioning that X is evil, as opposed to merely bad (from the narrative's perspective).
In the Kamloops graves case, there is a competing impetus: physical anthropologists and archeologists (who are part of we* in this case) very much want to preserve their status as scientists, so they have a strong stake in upholding the rigor of their methods. The Wikipedia entry for Kamloops Indian Residential School reflects this process. The "Possible Unmarked Graves" section is written in a cautious neutral tone, and points to specific plans for corroboration of the evidence:
The Kamloops graves case, therefore, is a very interesting case to watch, and I thank you for putting together such a great effort post on its progress.
I think this is one of the most important mechanisms underlying the culture war today. There's strong social pressure against questioning or denying claims that are favourable to the ingroup's preferred narrative, even when those claims are unambiguously wrong. Why are certain memes with low factual basis (e.g. racist police are murdering black men en masse) so prevalent? The pat, cynical explanation would be to say that everyone on the left is willing to lie to push their preferred narrative, but I don't think that's actually correct. The vast majority of the tribe truly believes these claims, because they haven't been exposed to any serious counter-arguments. Why? Because counter-arguments from within the tribe are socially proscribed, and bring the risk of ostracism, and counter-arguments from the outgroup are assumed to be in bad faith. Because of this mechanism, a false claim which is highly favourable to the tribe's priors can spread rapidly once it enters the memetic landscape (which only takes one bad actor, or even just an innocent error or cascade of minor rhetorical exaggerations). The "a black woman invented the telescope" meme kind of speaks to this dynamic.
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