You'll have to expand on this before I could agree. My inclination is to think quite the opposite. That is, when I read people who more or less articulately use highly emotion-button-pushing language to mock people like me, it puts my defenses up and makes me try to justify my beliefs, rationality be damned. Was this not pretty much the thrust of Politics is the Mind-Killer? If I were, to adopt a wild hypothetical, a conservative, I would probably say nearly anything to defend myself -- whether publicly or in my own mind -- against the kind of mockery I'd get on a daily basis from Paul Krugman's blog (Krugman chosen as example per mattnewport). Rationality-wise, that is not the position I want to be trying to put myself in. Rather, I want to seek out reasoned, relatively "cool" (as opposed to emotionally "hot") expressions of opposing viewpoints and try to approach them open-mindedly, trying to modify my positions if warranted.
I mean, am I missing something?
"If I were, to adopt a wild hypothetical, a conservative, I would probably say nearly anything to defend myself -- whether publicly or in my own mind -- against the kind of mockery I'd get on a daily basis from Paul Krugman's blog"
Yes, most people would do this, so the rationality challenge would be to fight against it. Think of it as special-forces-intensity rationality training.
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