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bolido_sentimental  2yr ago (text post)   3920 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 25, 2022

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.

Posted because I didn't see Zorba post one today. Feel free to delete if that's an issue.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Benda's The Treason of the Intellectuals. It seems like one of those books that people who know things reference at some point or the other.

Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics. Should have read it a long time ago really.

I’m reading The Three Languages of Politics, an erisology by economist and Libertarian Arnold Kling. Rather, I have the free audiobook from Cato on loop in my car.

It’s practically a guidebook for how to get along and have productive conversations on TheMotte and TheSchism. It has confirmed some of the things I’ve suspected philosophically, and startled me in places. Some of the things he covers are how to avoid failing your outgroup’s “ideological Turing test,” the possible evolutionary and definite historical roots of each perspective, and how arguments for policy are often used as a proxy for tribal power.

He starts with the three political moral axes:

  1. The liberty/coercion axis of libertarians

  2. The oppressed/oppressor axis of progressives

  3. The civilization/barbarism axis of conservatives

He demonstrates with 00’s/10’s news items how each tribe’s thought-leaders portray their axis’ moral bad as being enabled by the other two tribes’ moral goods. He points out that the rhetoric of the three tribes’ languages are used to acquire status among the tribe, not to change minds or win hearts from the other tribes’ members.

If we ever get a sidebar / wiki, the free ebook (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) on Cato should be a primer on how to avoid culture-warring on TheMotte. I haven’t yet found anything objectionable for mistake-theorists of any tribe.

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