I think there’s some bad knock-on effects for normalizing the use of “insane” to talk about very common features of the world: I think it makes social-rationalists to willing to disparage people and institutions, as part of a status-signaling game, often without much careful thought.
But I think there’s also something valuable about eg. calling belief in God “insane”. There’s a kind of willingness to call a spade a spade, and not back away from how the literal stated beliefs, if they were not pervasive, would in fact be regarded as signs of insanity.
I think there’s some bad knock-on effects for normalizing the use of “insane” to talk about very common features of the world: I think it makes social-rationalists to willing to disparage people and institutions, as part of a status-signaling game, often without much careful thought.
But I think there’s also something valuable about eg. calling belief in God “insane”. There’s a kind of willingness to call a spade a spade, and not back away from how the literal stated beliefs, if they were not pervasive, would in fact be regarded as signs of insanity.