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ciphergoth comments on Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013 - Less Wrong
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This sounds very much like religion - I'd be interested in hearing about a solid non-religious example.
Let's avoid object level examples until we resolve how to distinguish this dishonest rhetorical move from honest updates on the low validity of prior arguments now abandoned. Otherwise, we get bogged down in mindkiller without any general insight into how to be more rational.
But aren't we all agreed the specific examples are super-helpful for understanding a general phenomenon?
Politics. Social issues. You see a lot of it when circumstances change and a political party or activist organisation has to then reconcile the conflict between consequentialism and deontology, and somehow satisfy both sets of followers.
I discussed this with coffeespoons yesterday; the trouble is that political leaders often speak much less ambiguously than religious ones, so there's a lot less room to say "Well, what Marx really meant was..."
I dunno. I am reluctant to name present-day political examples on LW, but you doubtless feel a slight urge to throw your computing device against the wall when you see some current eloquent bit of black-has-always-been-white spin from our esteemed leaders here in the UK.
I found myself at our local church a couple of Sundays ago, where the sermon was a really very good polemic conclusively demonstrating that Galatians 2 rules racism as unChristian. I thought it was marvellously reasoned and really quite robust, except for the problem of large chunks of observed Christian history. (The resolution: you can, of course, prove anything and its opposite from a compilation that size.)