Right, but the problem is the people who believe in astrology (or who work for an astrology company, or whose friends are into astrology, etc.) will say “no, it’s wrong to criticize astrology” and the people who don’t have a stake in astrology will say “yes, it’s okay to criticize astrology” and there’s no neutral arbiter to adjudicate the disagreement. You haven’t gotten anywhere by going up a meta-level because the stakes are still the same.
As for intent, I tend to favor treating intentional and unintentional machiavellianism the same, as doing otherwise just amounts to punishing people for having an accurate self-model, which seems like a bad way to promote truthseeking.
Right, but the problem is the people who believe in astrology (or who work for an astrology company, or whose friends are into astrology, etc.) will say “no, it’s wrong to criticize astrology” and the people who don’t have a stake in astrology will say “yes, it’s okay to criticize astrology” and there’s no neutral arbiter to adjudicate the disagreement.
That’s the bare minimum I can expect. The problem is when people who don’t believe in astrology still take it upon themselves to make it a general social rule that you simply shouldn’t criticize any sufficiently dearly-held beliefs because it makes people’s feelings hurt. Because that can tip the scales from a minority to a majority and establish norms that are in fact long term toxic. I actually remember some time ago some Twitter discourse about how love for astrology is feminine-coded, and therefore mocking astrology is in fact something men do to put women down or something. This one is a bit of a ridiculous example and not many people were going along with it, but there are bigger things (like the shift in attitudes towards religion and militant atheism) that instead matter more.
As for intent, I tend to favor treating intentional and unintentional machiavellianism the same, as doing otherwise just amounts to punishing people for having an accurate self-model, which seems like a bad way to promote truthseeking.
The world is a big place, so there are probably a few people out there who truly abhor all criticism that hurts people’s feelings regardless of who it’s directed at. But in my experience, the vast majority of the time, whether someone perceives a criticism as hurtful or out of bounds depends strongly on whether the perceiver likes, agrees with, or is affiliated with the target of the criticism. To take the atheism example, it seems to me there wasn’t an overall shift away from criticism of deeply-held beliefs in general, but rather a shift in the larger battle lines of the culture war.
There was a shift, but it’s defended and rationalised in the terms I presented. Regardless of how and why the shift happened, many people eventually do simply believe in the rationalization itself, even if it emerged (probably not intentionally, but via selection effects) to simply fit the new shape of the coalition that was pushing it.
Right, but the problem is the people who believe in astrology (or who work for an astrology company, or whose friends are into astrology, etc.) will say “no, it’s wrong to criticize astrology” and the people who don’t have a stake in astrology will say “yes, it’s okay to criticize astrology” and there’s no neutral arbiter to adjudicate the disagreement. You haven’t gotten anywhere by going up a meta-level because the stakes are still the same.
As for intent, I tend to favor treating intentional and unintentional machiavellianism the same, as doing otherwise just amounts to punishing people for having an accurate self-model, which seems like a bad way to promote truthseeking.
That’s the bare minimum I can expect. The problem is when people who don’t believe in astrology still take it upon themselves to make it a general social rule that you simply shouldn’t criticize any sufficiently dearly-held beliefs because it makes people’s feelings hurt. Because that can tip the scales from a minority to a majority and establish norms that are in fact long term toxic. I actually remember some time ago some Twitter discourse about how love for astrology is feminine-coded, and therefore mocking astrology is in fact something men do to put women down or something. This one is a bit of a ridiculous example and not many people were going along with it, but there are bigger things (like the shift in attitudes towards religion and militant atheism) that instead matter more.
I don’t follow this bit, can you expand on it?
The world is a big place, so there are probably a few people out there who truly abhor all criticism that hurts people’s feelings regardless of who it’s directed at. But in my experience, the vast majority of the time, whether someone perceives a criticism as hurtful or out of bounds depends strongly on whether the perceiver likes, agrees with, or is affiliated with the target of the criticism. To take the atheism example, it seems to me there wasn’t an overall shift away from criticism of deeply-held beliefs in general, but rather a shift in the larger battle lines of the culture war.
On unintentional machiavellianism, see here.
There was a shift, but it’s defended and rationalised in the terms I presented. Regardless of how and why the shift happened, many people eventually do simply believe in the rationalization itself, even if it emerged (probably not intentionally, but via selection effects) to simply fit the new shape of the coalition that was pushing it.