If mistake-theoretic ideas are better at influencing people on the margin, there’s hope for the world yet! We just need to let our curiosity shine through, not get hung up on how mistaken conflict theorists are.
The incentives for a Conflict Theorist to present themselves as a Error Theorist are very strong. Of course, once they gain enough social power, they’ll often be confident enough to be out in the open.
OK, but do you have a specific conflict theorist that you know used to pretend to be a mistake theorist? Are you sure that this person intentionally obfuscated their beliefs instead of just changing their views along the way? Or is your claim purely theoretical? To be fair, there is a mild interpretation of your claim—merely that some people aren’t arguing in good faith. This is trivially true, but I imagine you meant something more.
There is another issue of whether there is a real benefit in pretending. Mistake theorists are not the most poplar people.
Specific examples would definitely make this post clearer, but I wanted to abstract away from hot button issues. Unfortunately it is hard to do both at the same time.
I’ve been trying to think about historical examples. Marxism while in some ways being strongly about conflict theory, they still wanted to keep the veneer of reasoned debate to get the backing of academics.
Hegel thought that philosophy develops; yet his own system was to remain the last and highest stage of this development and could not be superseded. The Marxists adopted the same attitude towards the Marxian system. Hence, Marx’s anti-dogmatic attitude exists only in the theory and not in the practice of orthodox Marxism, and dialectic is used by Marxists, following the example of Engels’ Anti-Dühring, mainly for the purposes of apologetics – to defend the Marxist system against criticism. As a rule critics are denounced for their failure to understand the dialectic, or proletarian science, or for being traitors. Thanks to dialectic the anti-dogmatic attitude has disappeared, and Marxism has established itself as a dogmatism which is elastic enough, by using its dialectic method, to evade any further attack. It has thus become what I have called reinforced dogmatism.[51]
OK, but you have real evidence that these people exist, right?
To clarify, I worry that these people don’t exist. The theory makes sense to some extent, but I don’t consider the average human to be this devious. And the behaviors this theory explains already have better explanations. Unless you use the words “pretend” and “conflict theorist” in some extremely mild way.
Notice that I’ve been asking a lot of yes/no questions in the previous comments. I’d love to get some yes/no answers to them.
Sometimes answers can’t be reduced to a simple yes or no.
I don’t have the power to see into people’s minds. So I can only infer why people behave the way that they do. And this post isn’t about whether Conflict Theorists mimic Mistake Theorists consciously or unconsciously, but about the fact that they do, with the point being that it is hard to tell them apart.
Again, I’m asking you to provide some sort of evidence that they actually do. You haven’t done that yet, aside from suggesting a motive. I’m not asking for something magical here. What sort of experiences and observations have led you to make the conclusion that these people exist?
If mistake-theoretic ideas are better at influencing people on the margin, there’s hope for the world yet! We just need to let our curiosity shine through, not get hung up on how mistaken conflict theorists are.
Very related: Guardians of the Truth.
I’m not so much trying to talk about how mistaken they are, but trying to understand the phenomenon. Which I haven’t quite managed yet though...
Are you sure the camouflage phenomenon exists though? The behaviors described in your post all seem explainable by the usual biases.
The incentives for a Conflict Theorist to present themselves as a Error Theorist are very strong. Of course, once they gain enough social power, they’ll often be confident enough to be out in the open.
OK, but do you have a specific conflict theorist that you know used to pretend to be a mistake theorist? Are you sure that this person intentionally obfuscated their beliefs instead of just changing their views along the way? Or is your claim purely theoretical? To be fair, there is a mild interpretation of your claim—merely that some people aren’t arguing in good faith. This is trivially true, but I imagine you meant something more.
There is another issue of whether there is a real benefit in pretending. Mistake theorists are not the most poplar people.
Specific examples would definitely make this post clearer, but I wanted to abstract away from hot button issues. Unfortunately it is hard to do both at the same time.
I’ve been trying to think about historical examples. Marxism while in some ways being strongly about conflict theory, they still wanted to keep the veneer of reasoned debate to get the backing of academics.
A quote from wikipedia from Popper.
OK, but you have real evidence that these people exist, right?
To clarify, I worry that these people don’t exist. The theory makes sense to some extent, but I don’t consider the average human to be this devious. And the behaviors this theory explains already have better explanations. Unless you use the words “pretend” and “conflict theorist” in some extremely mild way.
Notice that I’ve been asking a lot of yes/no questions in the previous comments. I’d love to get some yes/no answers to them.
Sometimes answers can’t be reduced to a simple yes or no.
I don’t have the power to see into people’s minds. So I can only infer why people behave the way that they do. And this post isn’t about whether Conflict Theorists mimic Mistake Theorists consciously or unconsciously, but about the fact that they do, with the point being that it is hard to tell them apart.
Again, I’m asking you to provide some sort of evidence that they actually do. You haven’t done that yet, aside from suggesting a motive. I’m not asking for something magical here. What sort of experiences and observations have led you to make the conclusion that these people exist?
As I’ve already indicated, that would take me into territory that I don’t want to go into.