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The Lincoln Project -- Just a Wee Taste

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
Yeah, it is funny in regards to special pleading as this: Special pleading is an informal fallacy wherein one cites something as an exception to a general or universal principle, without justifying the special exception.

All other humans are in part a product of local variation of nature and nurture. I am not. :D


It seems to be a very human trait, this ability to spot the fault in others. Honestly questioning ourselves, our own preconceptions and biases, is rarer.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
It seems to be a very human trait, this ability to spot the fault in others. Honestly questioning ourselves, our own preconceptions and biases, is rarer.

Well, it is simple. If you claim I have preconceptions and biases, you are wrong, because I am not a negative, how dare you. I am a positive for my local nature and nurture, but that is not relevant, because it is universal. It is psychology for a standard Western frame work. Yet it is also spiritual even for a non-standard religious atheist like me. :)
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Could. I'm getting flustered with the Democrats myself. I need a new party or just start my own.
You can join FDR's original Democratic Party, the party that gave us the middle class and the prosperity of the post-war period -- before it caved to corporate interests.
Today, this would be the Green Party: Platform
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
So in your view no conservative has ever come to their conclusions on their own. You are not indoctrinated but everyone that disagrees with you have been indoctrinated. Uh huh.

No, that has nothing to do with left or right per se. Some of all stripes are, others know their biases as biases.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
You know me. Reasonable by what standard? But I do agree. ;)
I've come across this sort of false equivalence argument quite a lot recently. A political figure says something mad and, when it is criticised, those that support the party in question react by disengaging their critical faculties and contriving to suggest that, to be balanced, one should studiously refrain from agreeing that it's nuts.

I see it as symptomatic of the collective nervous breakdown apparently being suffered by the USA : a weakening hold on reality that allows mad conspiracy theories to flourish and smooths the path for dangerous demagogues.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
No, it doesn't. Thinking, and the willingness to use it to inform yourself, is quite different from a willingness to accept whatever you are told during your indoctrination into whatever.
Everyone thinks they are willing to think and use it to inform yourself.

With the tone of statements, I would agree with:

#5
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
I've come across this sort of false equivalence argument quite a lot recently. A political figure says something mad and, when it is criticised, those that support the party in question react by disengaging their critical faculties and contriving to suggest that, to be balanced, one should studiously refrain from agreeing that it's nuts.

I see it as symptomatic of the collective nervous breakdown apparently being suffered by the USA : a weakening hold on reality that allows mad conspiracy theories to flourish and smooths the path for dangerous demagogues.

Perhaps, although very often I've noticed that people with an agenda have an incentive to ridicule and blacken their opposition to such a degree that it becomes difficult to swallow.

I think it demonstrates what I've suspected for quite a while now: Nobody really wants to discuss ideas anymore. It's more important for people to denigrate and mock their opposition than it is to address any points they might make. Sure, it's funny to laugh at the dude who talks about men's genitalia shrinking, but it doesn't get anyone any closer to understanding the nature of the disagreement at hand.

It's really more a clash of values, not so much a dispute over facts, as some people might portray it.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Almost everyone believes that their own opinions are arrived at through experience, knowledge, and rigorous thinking. Very few are aware of quite how many unquestioned assumptions, premises and prejudices their own reasoning must inevitably be based on.
As a kid who grew up in 40 foster homes, one orphanage (run by Protestants), and all of high school in a private boarding school run by Quakers, I encountered every kind of thinking imaginable. And I think that has helped me to need to think about what I think, to try and come to my own conclusions for what I think (hope?) are solid, rational reasons. And honestly, I think that has been an advantage for me.

But I am aware that I have areas that I simply accept, sometimes without having much to go on.
 

wellwisher

Well-Known Member
One symptom of indoctrination is the willingness and even the need to censor others who do not agree. If one was indoctrinated, they may not have thought things through. Rather they more likely accepted the bottom line opinions of their indoctrinators. This may have started at a young age. Censorship is often needed since common sense and good arguments, from those outside their group, can create doubt and confusion, since they are on shaky intellectual ground to begin with.

Twitter used to only censor one side of the political isle. This tells us who was indoctrinated and who was a threat to indoctrination. With Twitter up for sale, the thought of free speech is welcome by some, but not by everyone. Censorship is a tell.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
So in your view no conservative has ever come to their conclusions on their own. You are not indoctrinated but everyone that disagrees with you have been indoctrinated. Uh huh.
Not quite. In my view, every statement made in that video can be easily checked -- and for some reason, the people making the statements chose not to check. That smacks of lack of intelligence (or diligence) to me.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
But for real amusement, watch from 0:43 for just a few seconds. As an older male (familiar with the subject matter, and of that time), hysterically funny. That people can be SO stupid is quite astounding really.

It seems nobody recognized him. That's Alex Jones, and he's got serious legal problems now as well as going through a bankruptcy for his mouth: Alex Jones, Infowars, and the Sandy Hook Defamation Suits (firstamendmentwatch.org)

Everyone thinks they are willing to think and use it to inform yourself.

It is possible to learn to become immune to indoctrination. It merely takes an unwillingness to accept any claim uncritically. Indoctrination doesn't use sound argument, so it doesn't pass any test. It uses repetition, and if there is an argument, it is specious, not sound. Those unaware of this continually make the mistake of thinking that everybody is susceptible to indoctrination, that whatever one watches is imprinted as accepted as correct because they heard it.

But you can see that that is not so. What works in church won't work here with the skeptics, because being skeptics, they are accustomed to questioning all clams automatically and rejecting the insufficiently supported ones.

It's Dunning-Kruger territory - one being unaware that there are people thinking differently and better, and mistakenly thinking that it's all the same. We see that often here on RF, when uninformed people say, "Well, that's just your opinion." Likewise with this false equivalence you express.

So its the old "its not me, its them"

No, it's me, not them. "Nobody tells me it's them, not me. If it's anybody, it's me."

 
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