I think there’s a lot of mind-killing that happens as a result of relying on a presumed shared vocabulary for political identities that does not exist. When I say something left-coded, my Rationalist Libertarian Interlocutor often reproaches me, and then as we talk more about it, they often conclude that I’m a ‘boring centrist like everybody else’ who uses the language of the left owing to some biographical quirk.
I submit that the problem you are encountering is operating too much on simulacra level 3.
I honestly don’t give a rats ass what your “political identity” is. I care about your beliefs about the effects of different policies, your current beliefs about the world, and most of all your reasons for believing those things. Insofar as your “reasons” are in fact you self-modeling as “leftist”, “centrist”, “libertarian”, or some other label like that, you are clearly operating on simulacra level 3, and I stop caring.
That is to say that insofar as the majority of people have one or more of the items on that list of absurd beliefs you gave because they genuinely believe such things, they are dumb, and the only reason I’d care what they have to say is some morbid curiosity, or of course to argue against them (or both).
Insofar as the majority of people have one or more of the items on that list of absurd beliefs you gave because we simply lack a shared vocabulary for political identities, I again don’t care what they have to say. If they are actually trying to communicate to me that they think of themselves as a centrist, well, that claim has no impact on reality whatsoever, so who cares?
The same goes for people with stupid claims which read leftist.
The thing is that we do have shared vocabulary for things in the real world (excepting many technical terms, but one can just use Wikipedia or Claude for those), and there are not active social wars over what those real world words should mean (that laypeople ought to care about).
If you stick to simply precisely stating your beliefs and values (and reasons for having them), not only will you avoid the upsetting result of having others believe you are The Dreadded Outgoup!!! but you will also avoid meaningless conversations about which Hogwarts house political identity you are.
You wrote this comment in an adversarial tone but I Just Agree With You.
Indeed, this is an alternate formulation of the thesis of my post, and even uses language I used when characterizing the post itself to someone in the office ~2 hours ago.
Hm, I think the thing I disagree with, and was trying to argue against was that it is a good idea in the first place to even try to have a political map at all, nevermind to try to unwarp it.
The post is meant to be somewhat agnostic on the question—conditional on one has a map, here’s a common failure mode. It’s also meant to point in the direction of ‘reconsider the value of your map’.
Separately, I think I ~endorse your first comment, but I also think there are cases in which you should definitely have a map (eg you are attempting to achieve political ends). So I think your second comment is somewhat overstated.
I submit that the problem you are encountering is operating too much on simulacra level 3.
I honestly don’t give a rats ass what your “political identity” is. I care about your beliefs about the effects of different policies, your current beliefs about the world, and most of all your reasons for believing those things. Insofar as your “reasons” are in fact you self-modeling as “leftist”, “centrist”, “libertarian”, or some other label like that, you are clearly operating on simulacra level 3, and I stop caring.
That is to say that insofar as the majority of people have one or more of the items on that list of absurd beliefs you gave because they genuinely believe such things, they are dumb, and the only reason I’d care what they have to say is some morbid curiosity, or of course to argue against them (or both).
Insofar as the majority of people have one or more of the items on that list of absurd beliefs you gave because we simply lack a shared vocabulary for political identities, I again don’t care what they have to say. If they are actually trying to communicate to me that they think of themselves as a centrist, well, that claim has no impact on reality whatsoever, so who cares?
The same goes for people with stupid claims which read leftist.
The thing is that we do have shared vocabulary for things in the real world (excepting many technical terms, but one can just use Wikipedia or Claude for those), and there are not active social wars over what those real world words should mean (that laypeople ought to care about).
If you stick to simply precisely stating your beliefs and values (and reasons for having them), not only will you avoid the upsetting result of having others believe you are The Dreadded Outgoup!!! but you will also avoid meaningless conversations about which
Hogwarts housepolitical identity you are.You wrote this comment in an adversarial tone but I Just Agree With You.
Indeed, this is an alternate formulation of the thesis of my post, and even uses language I used when characterizing the post itself to someone in the office ~2 hours ago.
Hm, I think the thing I disagree with, and was trying to argue against was that it is a good idea in the first place to even try to have a political map at all, nevermind to try to unwarp it.
The post is meant to be somewhat agnostic on the question—conditional on one has a map, here’s a common failure mode. It’s also meant to point in the direction of ‘reconsider the value of your map’.
Separately, I think I ~endorse your first comment, but I also think there are cases in which you should definitely have a map (eg you are attempting to achieve political ends). So I think your second comment is somewhat overstated.
Thanks so much for this comment, it crystallized something that’s been in my subconscious for like two years.