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Mike Brock
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Unfashionable.

Yes. Because accepting the possibility you are wrong does not mean that you do not act on your beliefs as if they are right. I somehow doubt that the suffragettes would have quickly come to the conclusion that their political subjugation was the correct answer merely by virtue of listening to the arguments. Especially because they had listened to arguments that women had no place in politics their entire life, and they didn't seem terribly convinced. Instead, they convinced everyone else.

So I don't really see your conundrum here as being of terrible concern to continued practical exercise of collective truth-seeking.

I'd convince everyone to accept the possibility they are wrong about what they believe is right or true. And to be more modest and curious about people who take the time and effort to challenge the views they subscribe to.

I guess I'm a certain reducio form of the argument, you're correct? But I'd argue it's straying far from the underlying point, which perhaps I thought was implicit, but now I'll make it explicit, by revealing the normative claim: a society that tolerates diverse opinions, and a polity that accepts the idea that not everybody gets their way, but everyone is of equal franchise, is a good thing.

Here's perhaps the most fundamental point about why I don't tie my political/ideological beliefs close to my sense of who I am: because I'm not personally convinced that I'm not wrong about anything.

I'm a Bayesian. And my political views have shifted in sufficiently dramatic ways quite a few times in my life, that I'm pretty allergic to the idea that I know for certain that my beliefs are correct or optimal.

I am fundamentally open to the idea that I'm completely full of shit. And it's one of the reasons I'm so willing to debate and accept challenge. Out of a principle, I feel committed to the necessity of changing my mind if a better argument comes along.

So restricting myself to people who politically and ideologically agree with me, would cut me off from the possibility of gaining an insight that reveals the wrongness of my beliefs. This, to me anyways, seems stupid on its face.

I don't think anyone who knows me would consider me apathetic. Have you read my posts? 🤣

It is true that I am not LGBT. It is true however, than many of my close family are. It's also true, that I was highly politically active in Canada twenty years ago for legalizing same-sex marriage. I debated Michael Coren about it on TV. I also volunteered for years at the Pride Remembrance Run in Toronto at the beginning of Pride Week.

It may not be my lived experience personally, but as someone who has previously been politically active in pro-LGBT politics, I have certainly been under attack and experienced the bigotry. You really don't have to convince me.

I totally understand how unfair it is to have to fight for your rights and fight to exist. There's nothing fair about it.

But if you give up on trying to change people's minds, you're just ceding the playing field to the people who are willing to change people's minds against your own interests.

I try to avoid the hypocrisy, by simply not caring about whatever package-deal fallacy of ideas and beliefs that people might tend to associate with me based on whatever subset of things they've heard or read me say or write.

What I would say to this, is you should want to make people who oppose your lifestyle to empathize with you. You should want to change their mind, and persuade them. Forcing them further into your outgroup is counterproductive for you and society.

This is why campaigns like "Love is Love" was so powerful at moving public sentiment in the first two decades of the 21st century. It spoke to a relatable sense of fundamental fairness.

Trying to draw a dividing line between yourself and your enemies, may at some level be ethically justifiable, given someone may not respect your rights. However, game theory would suggest, using approaches that makes said someone change their mind and respect your rights is the more strategic path.

Not really. Identity politics are part of the bad part of human nature, that we constantly struggle to contain.

It requires that you hold certain conclusions as a condition of the group membership. It is unacceptable to challenge orthodoxy. Even if you say, disagree with a subset of policies, you are expected to keep it to yourself for the good of the group and to stay united. It demands hypocrisy of you.