“I support the labor movement, but just can’t agree with their tactics. They can always just get a better job.”
Phase transitions and bifurcations show up all the time in natural systems, from mathematics to cell division and population ecology; I don't know why people think social structures would be immune from this.
You're right but because it's no different from someone saying their specific solution is the only way. In reality, there are a multitude of different opinions and it seems likely to me that more than one would be effective.
> There's some times and things where one should expect a normal distribution, and other times and things where a binomial distribution shows up.
Sure things might tend to distribute into two major positions but that doesn't mean nobody holds a different opinion and it says absolutely nothing toward whether those two solutions are somehow the ideal solutions (or one of them, in the case of the OP).
Your statistical example actually takes things the wrong direction. The person you are responding to is positing a distribution with more than two modes, not fewer, and by suggesting there are two your example actually is closer to the “centrist” straw man.
The argument you are calling “centrist” is not claiming there is a “truth somewhere in the middle”. It’s claiming there are plausible positions (concentrations of probability in your metaphor) in more than just two locations.
I also considered adding that the assumption of a one-dimensional parameter space is also overly reductionist and not representative of the majority of positions people take when they feel like the mainstream choices are both wrong.
Then you responded with a completely different set of points attacking the parent poster on completely unrelated topics that you somehow equated to what the parent said.
If we want positive change in our world we need respectful and rational discourse. Posts likes yours actively tear down discourse and makes worse the very problems you mention.
This is a very ahistorical take. Tone policing and "moderation in discourse" has a strong connection to the will to maintain status quo. Radical discourse, direct action and even an unpleasant tone have however a rich history of change, both positive and negative.
A. You can be moderate because you believe moderate actions will bring about radical change, or
B. You can be a moderate because you believe things are good to some degree as they are, and any actions should result in moderate changes.
I'm inclined to believe the calls to moderate discourse come from the latter group. "Rational discourse" stands in opposition to "irrational discourse", with implied irrational demands.
In other words, if you can't see why group X would want something, you won't see anything group X does to get that as rational.
Why should every position need teeth? Isn't it possible that we are largely doing things correctly enough, and we should focus on the exceptions to that?
> "...I just don't support ... my parents meeting my daughter and her black boyfriend" [your caricature of a moderate liberal]
What do you accomplish, if your parents really are so racist, by tactlessly exposing to something they will simply reject? You have better options, even if your goal is for them to change. What about his parents, are they good? Maybe if they knew your daughter's boyfriend's parents were responsible, the truth would be easier to accept. I don't get why empathy is no longer a common resource for solving problems in the left coast culture.
People who are wrong about something are still people, and you won't notice when you're wrong like them, so why can't you empathize sometimes?
This is hardly my experience with racists. It would be nice if it worked, but there's a huge gulf between "empathy" and "wishful thinking."
(And my experience with racists is informed by gulf coast culture, not left coast culture.)
If they're your own parents, you have a huge advantage in terms of common ground.
The Klansman, at least in the present day, knows that he's on the margins of society's beliefs. Like any other tiny political position, holding those beliefs is uncomfortable. Even among the second category of racists, the KKK is too far. The Klansman doesn't have friends. His subconscious has been hoping for a way to rationalize leaving; it's more than happy to listen to Daryl Davis. His conscious, of course, is embarrassed to have been wrong, but with time that will fade.
The second category of racists don't believe that they're racist. They believe (possibly correctly) that they're in the mainstream, that the label "racist" has been turned into a cudgel by a minority. If their own child is dating a black man, well, it's the child that's been brainwashed, the common ground is to convince their daughter to remember how the family works. (Why did no KKK member attempt to convince Daryl Davis to cease his crusade?) They're the ones who have friends and social groups who will support them. They're the ones who can easily find neighborhoods and churches and grocery stores free of black people - not that black people would be unwelcome, but clearly, it's unnatural for whites and blacks to interact. They have no subconscious desire to rationalize changing their minds; if anything, they have a subconscious desire to keep their feelings. (What will their friends say? What will their extend family say? What will their church say? Well, they won't say anything, but we all know what they'll think, right?)
The Klansman is a Klansman because his friends are Klansmen. If left to their own devices, they'll just get more used to living that way.
Daryl doesn't win because he's on a crusade, he wins because he's a good friend.
It's great when this happens, but it's also extremely labor-intensive and it requires the person who has been in the grip of a hateful ideology to be looking for a way out of it in the first place. If they're not, then things can go terribly wrong. Back in 2017, three bystanders tried to intercede with a guy who was screaming racial abuse at two women on public transport, and he stabbed all three intercessors, killing two of them.
Unfortunately it is the job of those sympathetic to a cause to support it, whether they are victimized or not.
It's not "fair" or "right", it's just a reality that causes are advanced by those who care about them. Life is tragic that way.
> Back in 2017, three bystanders tried to intercede with a guy who was screaming racial abuse at two women on public transport, and he stabbed all three intercessors, killing two of them.
If he was ready to stab this woman, it is what it is. The lunatic who did the stabbing didn't get his way for free either. May they rest in peace.
Lunatics are brave and motivated, and heroes must be brave as well. It'd be nice if heroes could be effective and strong as well, but we don't get to choose when life calls upon us.
If that seminal Klansman were a lunatic, Daryl could have died that night. Daryl's a brave man, and that is unfortunately what is called for.
It's not fair or right either. Life is tragic that way. Sometimes your kids find no need to empathize with you.
My point (in the original context, but it still stands) was more that if you are serious about it being a good thing for your parents to be at peace with your daughter's race mixing, then you have to be serious about accomplishing that goal. The best way is probably not lashing out or lecturing the elderly about your perceived disappointment with them.
I suspect that people who do not consider their methods, are often not acting out of a sense of duty or charity, but instead engaging in an elaborate virtue signal, with the people they should care for standing as props.
In the case I mentioned the perpetrator was arrested by police, but you're waving aside the deaths as 'life is tragic, rest in peace.'
Police were called out the evening previous to the attack when the same guy was verbally abusing a black woman, Demetria Hester, on the same transit line, but they didn't arrest him and seemed to suggest to the woman that she had brought it on herself because she had fought back against his aggression and kicked him in the balls. It's subsequently emerged that Christian had threatened police, and despite all this they didn't do anything until after he had killed (reasonably comprehensive details below).
https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2019/09/13/alleged-max-kil...
Your whole position seems to be predicated on a kind of passive resistance, and if that gets people killed well that's just too bad. It seems like you're saying that anyone who actively resists or retaliates against aggression thereby loses all moral standing. That seems like a pro=aggressor position to me, since aggressors don't really care what other people think.
The points you're arguing against are ones I never made, so I will not go to any effort to defend or disavow them. I get the impression you're making no effort to find sense in what I'm saying, and looking for an excuse to call it "nonsense". I don't appreciate that and I won't keep it going.
It's not "fair" or "right", it's just a reality that causes are advanced by those who care about them. Life is tragic that way. [..] If he was ready to stab this woman, it is what it is. The lunatic who did the stabbing didn't get his way for free either. May they rest in peace.
All I did was summarize your comments above for the sake of brevity. I do think it's nonsense, and callous nonsense at that. What sort of sense am I supposed to have found that I missed?
People who are wrong about something are still people, and you won't notice when you're wrong like them, so why can't you empathize sometimes?
Oh dear no. Sure, they're still people, but if they've chosen to be mean about their views eventually they're going to be treated with reciprocity. It is not valid to say that 'you won't notice when you're wrong' as many people actively engage in self-reflection and other approaches so as to improve their decision-making.
When those asking for empathy habitually deny it to others, it's reasonable to question whether their request is made in good faith or is a mere gambit. The more a person's behavior resembles the latter, the more reasonable it is to cut them off.