Working on epistemic polarization. Something I find striking is that people often find those who are incompletely ideologically aligned with them to be more problematic than those who disagree completely.

Wonder if that's because people parse those who disagree with them as amoral actors and those who partially agree as morally inclined but spineless - thus having at least some moral accountability that they fail to dispatch.

Graph-theoretic models that produce ideological polarization over time through "anti-updating" don't account for this phenomenon. Models that proceed through the machinery of edge deletion are much better about it (although that might be for incidental reasons).

I like the ones where the weights on edges are influenced by the chromatic number of the overall structure - "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," &c.

What I'm getting at with "people parse those who disagree with them as amoral actors and those who partially agree as moral but spineless":

Intuitively it seems to me that "agency" is a meta-level human virtue. Denying that your opponents have it is the greatest insult.

This is a theme that comes out of, say, human theodicy. (Evil exists in the world because the fact that people are PERMITTED to do bad things is itself a good thing.)

In Exodus it's written that God "harden[s] Pharaoh's heart." The king lacks the agency to even be responsible for his own atrocities. He is not the final author of his own evils. Some scholars feel this exculpates Pharaoh, but to me, it's always driven home how *extra bad* he is.

In Dante's Inferno, various backbone-less figures from throughout history are seen chasing a white flag around the gates of Hell. They're not permitted to enter. Even Hell has rejected them; even the demons morally scorn them. "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che non entrate"?

This is probably why I find "self-hating" or "uncle Tom" to be really, REALLY awful insults--among the worst things you can call someone. It's claiming: "Not only are your views wrong, but I don't believe you have the agency to sincerely believe them."

Related (although not nearly as searing an insult) is "pick me" or "MRDA." Rather than implying you're complicit in your own oppression, it implies you have something to gain from holding a certain opinion.

But that's just classic ad hominem. It lacks the biting edge of denying the personhood of the ideological opponent--because it still permits them to have positive motives; aspirations.

To be a pick-me, one has to desire to be picked. That's a positive claim, a vision for the future. To be self-hating means one is driven by hostile emotionality toward oneself, which is a negative claim.

I imagine Nietzsche would have something to say about the master/slave morality implications of this, but I think he gets the whole thing backwards.

I see this a lot in labor left circles--neolibs are much more despised than the archetypal Trump supporter is. I sympathize if what's going on is that one type is parsed as "terrible world vision" and the other as "correct world vision, but won't work with me to actualize it."

You could claim that the underlying psychology is instead that type 1 is "insufficiently educated to understand the truth" and 2 is "sufficiently educated but turning away." I hate that--it's a nasty way of thinking about people--but I don't think it's what's actually going on.

I don't want to jump into that Philosophy Twitter minefield about reading THE GREAT TEXTS (because I feel like being a Libra about it and just saying everyone's right) but I'll point to its existence as indicative of the difference between "educated" and "well-read"

The point is, I don't think the LL views the archetypal Trump supporter as "uneducated" in the relevant sense. His lived experiences are much more relevant to the truth claims at hand than those of a champagne socialist are.

Malice and cowardice are clean different things. In fact, I'm not sure it's possible to simultaneously express them both. My claim is that to a lot of traditional sensibilities, cowardice is *worse.*

I can respect an opponent--perhaps even a double agent--but never a traitor.

Again with the Commedia (sorry) Dante ranks the sins as follows, from least bad to worst:

Incontinence
Violence
Malice (fraud perpetrated for personal gain)
Betrayal
Lack of principles ("The Uncommitted")

I think this is correct.

A topic of constant moral controversy is whether to admit some grudging respect for people who do terrible things because they think those things are right.

But I don't see any controversy over whether we should seek to understand the moral complexities of those who do bad things out of cowardice or desire for gain. (I already made the point that these two motivations are different, but I think the claim stands.)

I feel that proves my point. There's a distinction between someone who causes much harm in a wrongheaded attempt to improve the world and a Sackler who does it for himself. Of course they're both awful and depraved. But they strike our moral senses differently. (End of thread)