Epistemic status: attempting to point at a thing that I can't fully articulate
Whenever one side is totally in the right and the other side is totally in the wrong, you'll get people calling for moderation. "There are two sides to every story," they say. "How can you be sure that you're so different from your opponents?"
Whenever two sides are exactly the same, you'll get people calling for action. "Look at the atrocities they commit! You can't justify that."
And in the first case, you'll also get people calling for action. "Look at the atrocities they commit! You can't justify that." And the people calling for moderation will further say: "whenever two sides are exactly the same, you get people calling for action..."
And in the second case, you'll also get people calling for moderation. "There are two sides to every story." And the people calling for action will further say: "whenever one side is totally in the right and the other side is totally in the wrong..."
I haven't created the loop, I'm just gesticulating towards it. The loop exists, I don't know exactly what form it takes, and I don't know what to do about it.
Focusing on the consequences seems like one way out, but... I feel like both sides will always tell me that if I just focus on the consequences, it will seem obvious that they're right and their opponents are wrong. And when I ask both sides "okay, what are the consequences?", they're going to argue about what the consequences are, and the argument is going to look like all the other arguments.
But anyway, arguments about consequences should not be infinitely recursive, because they deal with the real world, the observable reality. If you're stuck in such a loop, you're doing it wrong.
Sadly, most of the policy-related discussions are done wrong.
> Epistemic status: attempting to point at a thing that I can't fully articulate
Oh come on: stop stealing Scott Alexander's lines.
As to the rest, well yes, the whole point is that levels of contrarianism and meta-contrarianism, the location of a position on today's political landscape, indicate basically nothing at all about the actual merits of the idea.
Except if it's a Republican idea, in which case it's been carefully optimized to be wildly insane. But they're a special case: other country's right-wing parties often aren't like that (say, the Christian Democrats in Germany).
Whenever one side is totally in the right and the other side is totally in the wrong, you'll get people calling for moderation. "There are two sides to every story," they say. "How can you be sure that you're so different from your opponents?"
Whenever two sides are exactly the same, you'll get people calling for action. "Look at the atrocities they commit! You can't justify that."
And in the first case, you'll also get people calling for action. "Look at the atrocities they commit! You can't justify that." And the people calling for moderation will further say: "whenever two sides are exactly the same, you get people calling for action..."
And in the second case, you'll also get people calling for moderation. "There are two sides to every story." And the people calling for action will further say: "whenever one side is totally in the right and the other side is totally in the wrong..."
So it goes.