> I've tried to be pretty explicit about only expecting buy-in for a minimal flag that says, "'I Can Define a Word Any Way I Want' can't be the end of the debate, because choosing to call things different names doesn't change the empirical cluster-structure of bodies and minds in the world; while the same word might legitimately be used with different definitions/extensions in different contexts
-> I do want to distinguish between direct ideological conformity enforcement attempts, and "people not living up to their usual epistemic standards in response to ideological conformity enforcement in the general culture."
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-> So-called "rationalists" are actually very good at not-being-persecutory! (I don't think I'd be saying this in the nearby possible world where Scott Siskind didn't have a traumatizing social-justice-shaming experience in college, but it's true here.)
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-> I want to emphasize this, because I don't want to fall into the [bravery-debate](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/18/against-bravery-debates/) trap of, "Look at me, I'm so heroically persecuted, therefore I'm right (therefore you should have sex with me)."
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-> My hope has been that it's possible to apply just enough "What the fuck kind of rationalist are you?!" social pressure to cancel out the "You don't want to be a Bad (Red) person, do you??" social pressure and thereby let people look at the arguments. I don't know if that actually works.
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> I keep thinking of the part where Dagny entreats the great Dr. Robert Stadler to denounce a not-technically-lying statement by the State Science Institute
> Imagine your friends got a new front porch installed on your house, and you noticed that the boards were smoother and shinier than you expected. A question you might then ask your friend is, "Oh, is this real wood, or one of those wood-plastic composites?"
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff