Multiheaded comments on [Link] Why the kids don’t know no algebra - Less Wrong

21 Post author: GLaDOS 04 July 2012 10:29AM

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Comment author: Multiheaded 04 July 2012 09:00:53PM 1 point [-]

Here:

a culturally diverse society can be dominated (ruled) by one social class, whose dominance is achieved by manipulating the societal culture (beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, mores) so that its ruling-class worldview (Weltanschauung) is imposed as the societal norm, which every social class then perceives as a universally valid ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo — as natural, inevitable, and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class

So when you're off-handedly saying that something is "good sense", the long Western educational and cultural tradition of left-liberalism, which is undoubtedly the most influential one around, might have something to do with your implicit thought process. It's not an agency fiction because I'm not suggesting that there's a cackling university professor somewhere who plotted molding your idea of "good sense" to include a degree of PC-ness, but merely that it's mostly the memes that don't go against the intellectual classes' convictions and preferences which tend to survive, so ideas kind of flow towards an intellectual-dominated consensus.

Again, I'm not even sure that this is a bad thing.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 09:07:31PM *  1 point [-]

My bad for perpetually erring on the side of brevity.

By "good sense" I mean it's fundamentally wise to account for how people might react to what you're saying when you're figuring out how to say it. That can go either way. For example, if your audience has evaporatively cooled to the point that they'll only tolerate virulently anti-PC or PC views, then you probably won't have much incentive to "reach across the aisle," as it were.

EDIT: This is irrespective of the facts, of course. The anti-PC crowd may have greater access to the facts by virtue of their comfort with prickly ideas, but of what use is that advantage if the people who need those same facts most refuse to listen? It's a truism, I know, but operative aspect of that word here is true.

Comment author: Multiheaded 04 July 2012 09:13:42PM *  0 points [-]

I see, I see, but how much of that is mere pragmatism and how much is you rationalizing the virtue of politeness, which we've been raised with among other such ideology-related memes?

Comment author: [deleted] 04 July 2012 09:15:26PM 1 point [-]

If politeness = effectiveness, then where does the rationalization come into play?

And I don't mean politeness as a Trojan horse for avoidance and euphemism.