I am not 'a centrist.' In the UK, I am centre-left. If I was in the US, I'd be further left. If I was in Pakistan, I'd be a radical.When it comes to the political spectrum, my views are moderate but it's a mistake to assume that I, or anyone, takes a position because it is centre
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On many things, I am close to being an absolutist. These things include freedom of speech, individualism, secularism, the importance of an evidence-based epistemology, the non-discrimination of people by gender, race or sexuality. I am uncompromising on all these things.
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Having these values means I cannot support any positions on the far-left or far-right coz both of those positions are in opposition to the values above. This is a very different motivation to finding myself somewhere in the middle than having a predilection for middle positions.
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Those awful memes which have 'centrists' taking a middle position on major human rights issues actually reveal the motivated inconsistency that extremists are prone to, not those of us often accused of centrism right now.
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It's not us who support freedom of speech sometimes, who think religious privilege is OK in some cases, who want some individual freedoms curtailed, who think evidence can be dispensed with for some claims or that it is OK to discriminate by race, gender sexuality in some cases.
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The kind of inconsistency above which applies values pragmatically and inconsistently is not the failing of the majority of us who value secular liberal democracy and the fruits of the Enlightenment. It is the failing of the ideologue who can be right or left.
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How can you argue for an evidence based epistemology and at the same time argue for non-discrimination?
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By arguing for not discriminating by gender, race and sexuality specifically. It's fine to discriminate against people based on evidence that they are, eg not qualified for a certain job. Their gender, race or sexuality won't tell you that.
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It will under certain circumstances, if the evidence is there- you can't prejudge it. I am not arguing for discrimination, only that your starting point is false and could be used against you.
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How is it false? I'm clearly not asking for people never to discriminate on the grounds of evidence.
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But you don't know what that evidence is. And to what it might relate to. You cannot start from a position of waiting for the evidence and at the same time denying any possible relationship that evidence might suggest to people with shared characteristics. It's disingenuous.
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I don't know what you mean. Obviously, we can't evaluate on evidence if we don't know what it is. But I am talking about not discriminating on the grounds of race, gender or sexuality but on evidence of unsuitability.
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Eg, in the most extreme difference we know of, it was found that no woman has ever passed strength & stamina requirements to be a marine. But not rejected on the grounds of being women but on not having the strength or stamina. If one day, a woman does, she should be accepted
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That's not what being a centrist means.
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That's why I defined it. It is what I am being accused of so it is that I need to address.
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I get that. I see a lot of people misuse that term, and see why you're explaining yourself.
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I don't think it's a very useful term either, tbh. It misses the point.
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Agree on 'centrism'. That's not a term I use when I can get away with it. No way around using shorthand labels like centrist, left, right, etc.
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But don’t a lot of people with left and right leaning views just go by centrist? I don’t think the term necessarily means your opinion on every issue falls in middle. (If that is what you mean here)
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That's why I defined the accusations.
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I've seen the utility of "Radical Moderate" or plain old "Skeptic" ...
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But when I hear “radical moderate” I just think of Rick and Morty fans
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I take it from Pierre Trudeau's musing on the "radical middle." Definitely an under-determined buzz-phrase. My ultra-Trumpist has a weird buzz-phrase landscape surrounding "Elites." Boo hiss.
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Wikipedia has an article on radical centrism (Not that I trust it to be a mostly unbiased source anymore) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_centrism …
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I'll have to use it as a variant in my tiresome "'The Left' | 'The Right' | 'A Flabby Generality' ate my homework." I have come to loathe a certain petitio ... if you know what I mean.
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