fafnir wrote: ↑
Steersman wrote: ↑
<snip>
You have this mile-wide brush of a bogeyman of the "Progressive Liberal" and his "cult of the the individual" that you try to tar everyone
I don't tar everyone. Just Progressive Liberals.
Which seems to include everyone to the left of Attila the Hun ...
fafnir wrote: ↑
Steersman wrote: ↑with without providing much in the way of evidence to go along with your bill of particulars. Where - exactly - am I promoting or endorsing any specific "progressive liberal" policies?
Well, wanting to normalise well known prostitutes being teachers seems kind of progressive to me, but it's not really about policies. It's about your Liberal beliefs and your faith in Progress. ....
Sure would like to know whether you'd like to go back to the Dark Ages or before and let the "doctors" of that time minister to your wife in a difficult childbirth. Or to your kids with any number of childhood diseases.
Not sure that this "conversation" is all that productive or useful anymore as you seem not all that "intellectually honest", that you have a tendency to talk out of both sides of your mouth. For example, to draw a line under that point, you repeatedly blather on about "faith in Progress (!!11!! :roll: )" supposedly being "a bad thing" yet will, if pressed, probably concede that that's the case - except for "sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, public health and peace" .... :roll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djZkTnJnLR0
You rather pigheadedly refuse to even consider the possibility that all of the principles undergirding all of that "sanitation, medicine, ... public health and peace" have a great deal of relevance to all of those traditions that you're rather desperately defending.
fafnir wrote: ↑
Steersman wrote: ↑And I've likewise argued for not stereotyping people - not judging an entire group by some misperceptions of a narrow segment of the group. Your "We at least know that looking down on prostitutes isn't that stupid" has to be a classic in that department - I expect that you and the
Green River Killer would have been fast friends ....
Exactly, you are a Progressive Liberal. I've asked you, I don't know how many times, about whether you think there may be any negative impacts on society from normalising well known prostitutes being teachers, you've brushed this aside every time. Your lack of concern about unintended negative side effects of your policy is an example of Progressive Liberal thought. I certainly don't deny that there are potential downsides to the social exclusion of any group, but then I'm not a Progressive. Life is a series of tradeoffs.
Really don't think you're paying attention. Think I've explained it several times, one way or another.
Your "argument" - being charitable - boils down into an assertion that we shouldn't get out of bed in the morning because we might get hit with a truck, that we shouldn't try implementing any social policies at all because - hey! - we don't know all the consequences. Nice that you concede the existence of various feedback mechanisms in society and the concept of perverse incentives. But you might try thinking - a challenge, I'm sure - that we simply can not know all of the consequences of any course of action, that we have make various educated guesses, that doing nothing is very often a "cure" much worse than the disease. See Kennedy, Franklin, ancien regime, and pre-revolution Russia.
In addition, as I think I've said or suggested several times, your blathering on about "negative side effects" is pretty much a red herring. The issue is whether some behaviour patterns or statements in someone's past is sufficient cause to deny them employment opportunities. You're just as bad as the "woke" who are all too quick to "cancel" other people because of long-gone statements or behaviours that are irrelevant to the issue at hand.
How, exactly - as I've asked several times - will having
been a prostitute necessarily preclude the ability to perform the duties of a teacher? All you've got is special pleading, citing tradition as some bogus "exception to a general or universal principle, without justifying the special exception".
But big of you to "trade off" the rights of sexworkers to make a living to further the "greater good" encompassed by whatever you think qualifies as your ethical "tradition" de jour ....
fafnir wrote: ↑
<snip>
My argument, as I have told you repeatedly, and which you ignore because it isn't how you think about the world, is I believe there would be unintended negative consequences at the level of the culture by doing this.
You can believe in the trinity and transubstantiation if you want. But that hardly makes it a fact.
Why I suggested you're fellow-travelers with many of the social constructionists, that you're in there like a dirty shirt with Nietzche's "Facts do not exist, only interpretations."
You blather on about how "Facts can certainly contradict tradition" but when push comes to shove, you're all too quick to fall back on "mother church" - so to speak.
fafnir wrote: ↑
Steersman wrote: ↑Your apparent rejection of the alternative, objective narratives, seems to preclude any rational criticisms of various
social constructionists. You say you don't qualify as a member of that group - supposedly because you at least concede, thankfully, that biology has some bearing on different behaviours by sex (gametes!). However, that's not the defining or essential but quite problematic aspect of that group - as Nietzche put it in that article, it's the idiotic claim that "Facts do not exist, only interpretations."
It depends what one means. I certainly agree that if you walk off a cliff you will fall.
Progress ... Many of those you're defending seem rather unclear on the concept:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/maga ... =url-share
fafnir wrote: ↑I think I've just been talking about the categorisation of objects in the world and language. It's not something I have thought about very hard, but I would say that there is a core of obvious truth to social constructivism that in the post war period got wrapped in layers of bullshit in order to achieve political ends.
Something I'd more or less agree with, not least because I've often said that the social constructionists have a point, at least when it comes to arguing that our definitions are, in fact, "socially constructed".
But you and they seem rather remarkably reluctant - being charitable - to give any thought at all as to how and why some definitions might be better than others.
As you seem to have some handle on feedback systems and the principles behind them, and some appreciation of Boolean logic, you might try reading several of my essays at
LetterWiki and
Medium.
fafnir wrote: ↑
Steersman wrote: ↑Probably when push comes to shove you'll at least concede that there
are facts - except when they contradict tradition.
No! Facts can certainly contradict tradition. I've already been over this with you. We covered this in talking about religion where I said that social beliefs might be a net social good, or even critical to a society, even if they weren't literally true. I also said that the test of all things was how they worked out in the world, you disagreed with that, remember?
Yes, because you think "how they worked out in the world" is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Cases in point being your "the moral vacuum left by religion" and insistence on anathematizing prostitutes - more precisely, not that this cuts a lot of ice with you, an ex-prostitute.
You concede - bravo! :roll: - that "social beliefs
might be a social good" but you're remarkably reluctant - not to say "pigheaded" - about giving any thought at all on how they
might also be a rather pernicious "social evil". You must be some sort of "academic" because you seem rather remarkably reluctant to consider the consequences of various "traditions".
fafnir wrote: ↑
The idea that tradition needs to give a little bit and that I am arguing against that is laughable. Of course it's going to give. The non-liberal world has been in retreat since the 18th Century. Any revolution is hardly going to come from the overreach of Conservatism.
Don't see that your "tradition" of defending religion, social constructionist claptrap, "the ancien regime over the revolution, or the Tzar over the Bolsheviks", or anathematizing prostitution, is "giving" all that much. Pointing to some general progress while repudiating it with your next sentence is not all that helpful - or intellectually honest.