One giant category of dark side reasoning looks like “That idea is _”
Where the idea is an “is” (not a “should”) and _ is any negative affect word with a meaning other than “untrue”.
Examples include {unpatriotic, communist, capitalist, liberal, conservative, provincial, any-demonym-goes-here, cultish, religious, atheistic, sinful, evil, dangerous, repugnant, elitist, condescending, out-of-touch, politically incorrect, offensive, argumentative, hateful, cowardly, fool-hardy, inappropriate, indecent, unsettling, lewd, silly, idiotic, new-fangled, old-fashioned, staid, dead, uncool, too simple, too complicated} and many more.
Important note: The exception to this rule is if the speaker could goes on to show how _ is evidence about the truth of the proposition. If you can say why something is idiotic, that’s fine. A seasoned scientist has the right to say “that theory looks too complicated” if the they have many examples of surprisingly simple theories explaining things well, but a creationist doesn’t earn the right to accuse the theory of evolution of being “too complicated,” until they explain what whatever it is they mean by “too complicated” has to do with the idea being wrong.
To avoid concluding that an idea is true, the Dark Side’s first line of defense is to avoid even considering whether the idea is true. Those who are good enough at suppressing contradictions can simply save themselves the trouble of building up “a vast complex of anti-law, rules of anti-thought”. After all, building such a complex is a risky business from the standpoint of protecting the precious belief. The larger the complex gets, the more close scrapes it could have with real sensory experience.
Just as a murderer ties the corpse of his victim to a heavy stone before throwing it into the water, so too do victims of the Dark Side tie ideas they want to dispose of to negative affect words. It really does make them less likely to resurface.
The same caution applies to tying positive affect words to desired ideas.
Ideas are also often dismissed for being politically correct, by concluding the speaker is a hypocrite. I suppose you can count that as a particular case of cowardly.
One giant category of dark side reasoning looks like “That idea is _” Where the idea is an “is” (not a “should”) and _ is any negative affect word with a meaning other than “untrue”.
Examples include {unpatriotic, communist, capitalist, liberal, conservative, provincial, any-demonym-goes-here, cultish, religious, atheistic, sinful, evil, dangerous, repugnant, elitist, condescending, out-of-touch, politically incorrect, offensive, argumentative, hateful, cowardly, fool-hardy, inappropriate, indecent, unsettling, lewd, silly, idiotic, new-fangled, old-fashioned, staid, dead, uncool, too simple, too complicated} and many more.
Important note: The exception to this rule is if the speaker could goes on to show how _ is evidence about the truth of the proposition. If you can say why something is idiotic, that’s fine. A seasoned scientist has the right to say “that theory looks too complicated” if the they have many examples of surprisingly simple theories explaining things well, but a creationist doesn’t earn the right to accuse the theory of evolution of being “too complicated,” until they explain what whatever it is they mean by “too complicated” has to do with the idea being wrong.
To avoid concluding that an idea is true, the Dark Side’s first line of defense is to avoid even considering whether the idea is true. Those who are good enough at suppressing contradictions can simply save themselves the trouble of building up “a vast complex of anti-law, rules of anti-thought”. After all, building such a complex is a risky business from the standpoint of protecting the precious belief. The larger the complex gets, the more close scrapes it could have with real sensory experience.
Just as a murderer ties the corpse of his victim to a heavy stone before throwing it into the water, so too do victims of the Dark Side tie ideas they want to dispose of to negative affect words. It really does make them less likely to resurface.
The same caution applies to tying positive affect words to desired ideas.
Ideas are also often dismissed for being politically correct, by concluding the speaker is a hypocrite. I suppose you can count that as a particular case of cowardly.