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Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry but you can't argue that you are free of ideology by quoting Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson. That's very funny.

Thomas Sowell is a fiscal conservative whose ideology boils down to "individual decisions are primarily responsible for divergent outcomes". Jordan Peterson is a Christian conservative, all his advice might as well be Bible citations. He also knows nothing except ideological positions when it comes to criticising the left wing; he loves the term "postmodern neomarxist" despite those terms being completely contradictory.

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Nice straw man, buddy.

1) I didn't claim to be free of ideology. How's your reading comprehension?

2) There's nothing funny about quoting two people that are probably both smarter and wiser than you in order to make a good and valid point.

1: yes you did:

> There is similarly a non-ideological answer to "should I steal bread to feed my family?"

> proceeds to describe their own thought process

you didn't even engage with the ideological elements of the question. Is it right to redistribute property if the need is greater elsewhere? Does the right to survive override the right to property? What if violence is necessary to take the bread? You just treated it like a personal cost-benefit analysis of a single instance.

2: yes there is. The fact that you consider them to be authorities on non-ideological positions is the funny part.

1. No I didn't.

I engaged with the question and responded, essentially, "there may not be a universally right answer to your question." I just didn't respond the way wished I would.

And, in general, I would say it's not ok to forcefully take property because you made the judgement that the property would be better used in your hands, but I won't say there are no exceptions to that. Again, life is complex. Abandon ideology.

2. I think you are overdue for some humble self-reflection.

1. saying 'it's complex' isn't a non-ideological position, it just calls for nuance. I already agreed that nuanced ideology is better than rigid and inflexible ideology - I think that's true of people I broadly align with and people I disagree with. You might want to reflect on the conditions under which it's acceptable to redistribute property, because if there's a dividing line for you it'll be telling what that line is. It sounds to me like you primarily navigate on intuition alone but I could be wrong. I could easily go on a cost-benefit analysis like you did about stealing bread, but instead it was for mugging businessmen and using the money to pay for drugs and prostitutes. I'm sure you would agree that the latter is wrong, but I doubt you could elaborate a coherent framework for discerning between right and wrong action beyond gut-feel.

2. humble self-reflection isn't going to lead me to think that Sowell and Peterson are authorities on non-ideology. But the tiniest bit of research into the criticism of them might lead you to understand the flaws in their positions. I would know: I used to think Jordan Peterson was great and his tirades against the postmodern neomarxists was him defending western liberalism against university indoctrination and crybullies or whatever. Then I grew up, read some books, actually thought about my internal unchallenged opinions.

I'm not the person you were discussing with, but couldn't help but notice that this comment you call the person an ideologue:

> Again, life is complex. Abandon ideology.

Seems to be in direct conflict with this comment you made earlier:

> I find that when we call someone an ideologue today, or refer to an ideology, it is always a false narrative-based over-simplification of the world.

The idea of abandoning ideology is it's own ideology, no?

I don't think so, no. The call to abandon ideology is to recognize that narratives can contain truths in a limited form, but it is an error but to treat them as more than they are. I don't see that as an ideology, but as a simple fact about narratives and ideologies themselves. They are, by design, simplifications of reality, or very narrow windows into reality.

I'm suggesting that in the implementation of what you describe, there is ideology at play. To me, it seems like ignoring that is it's own, different type of ideology.

Your responses are mostly regurgitating things you've watched from youtube philosophers. You clearly have an ideology whether you believe you do or not.

You implying that a quite prolific 90-year-old scholar is a "Youtube philosopher" comes off as pretty ignorant or foolish. Sowell did most of his work before Youtube existed, and AFAIK has never directly engaged with the platform in any way.

And again, I never claimed to be free of ideology. At the same time, you haven't done anything to pin down my ideological constraints.

Sowell mostly pops up in the same conservative circles as the IDW crowd these days. It's all under the same online junk philosophy umbrella. It's not like his material has aged particularly well.

Most of what you're parroting seems to be from JP anyways.

"Smarter" is arguable, but unless the parent got hooked on benzos, pursued a scientifically-unsound, meat-only diet, and then ended up in a Russian hospital I think it's safe to say they're wiser than Jordan Peterson.

Nutrition is a fantastic example of a field where the adage "life is complex" applies so well. I love how a person:

1) has major health problems

2) changes his diet and immediately sees those health problems go away.

3) gets mocked online by complete strangers.

Human bodies are so complex and variable. What works for one person's health may not work for another. If you are blessed to find something that works for you, be grateful and humble, and don't automatically assume what you know applies equally to everyone else. Also, "science" is not even close to settled on the subject of nutrition as it applies to individuals.

Jordan Peterson really should have known better with regards to benzos. He said on a Joe Rogan podcast that science only recently found out how bad they were which I personally can't believe to be true, but if it is it is an indictment on 'science'.

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