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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27875 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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It's not clear to me why you think any of those beliefs would be useful. It is almost never the case that an empirically untrue belief (e.g. sun won't rise without human sacrifice) is useful, particularly in an open society where untrue beliefs can be challenged and proven wrong. The only context where a belief like that would be useful would be a closed culture where competing values are not allowed to challenge dogma and orthodoxy. Cultural mixing in a free society brings about the destruction of such beliefs.

It is almost never the case that an empirically untrue belief (e.g. sun won't rise without human sacrifice) is useful

Freudian psychology is quite possibly one of the most influential memeplexes to ever have existed; call it somewhere in the top-fifty. "Influential" is isomorphic to "useful". Freudian psychology was empirically untrue, even trivially so. Likewise Marxism.

particularly in an open society where untrue beliefs can be challenged and proven wrong.

"Open" societies don't actually exist. The best we've ever observed is "relatively open", which is nearly the same thing provided your views aren't the ones that necessitate the "relatively", and indistinguishable from "closed" of they are. "Free Speech" is not a stable ideal, and whenever implemented it rapidly decays into "Free Speech so long as most people are okay with what you say", at best. All observed societies follow this pattern.

And yet Freud and Marx are far less influential than they were 100 years ago. Even people who purport to be Freudians or Marxists today will readily admit these people got things wrong, because the countervailing evidence is so overwhelming.

"Free Speech" is not a stable ideal, and whenever implemented it rapidly decays into "Free Speech so long as most people are okay with what you say", at best.

No system of organizing society is stable. The tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time.

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