committing to a specific ideology is a trap
many smart ppl make the mistake of committing to one ideology and thereafter their intelligence is solely directed toward finding the best arguments to support/rationalize their chosen ideology
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Depends on what you mean by commitment. Tacit support and identitarian clinging are not the same thing.
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There's a difference between adhering to an ideology for Reasons and letting the ideology provide your Reasons for you. Latter is v. dangerous.
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the former also seems like it would almost always be toxic tho. can you elaborate on an example in which it wouldn't be? running for political office and have no chance of winning if you don't affiliate with a well-known ideology?
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Similarly, I don't identify as leftist, but people generally label me as such because most of my political opinions and actions converge that way.
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if your independently-thought-out conclusions happen to overlap a lot with a particular ideology i see no problem with that
it's when people become devotees of specific ideologies that they lose the ability to arrive at conclusions outside their ideology's accepted opinions
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Also, IMO this hard and fast relationship with ideology is itself a tool of black/white-type political radicals, and I don't approve of its use.
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interesting. you're saying you've seen (destructive?) radicals who were vocally critical of ideological possession? care to elaborate? i haven't seen this. most anyone i've ever seen speaking meta-ideologically seems clear-headed, sane, helpful
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The people who are the most critical of ideological highjacking in others, IME, are themselves tightly wound in that web - and completely unaware.
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ah, i see what you mean and have observed this behavior --- interesting. one thing that's key for me is that ideologues are quick to straw-man others as being in an opposing ideological camp, but it always goes only one way and they don't speak in meta-ideological terms
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He also holds up far less sophisticated thinkers like that bottom-feeder Ben Shapiro on the basis of their alignment with "conservatism".
Many of his ideological opponents *are* complete lunatics, but most of them are certainly more sane than people like Shapiro.
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interesting, i haven't seen his defenses of Shapiro. Shapiro is actually the quintessential example i was thinking of when composing my original tweet: a brilliant mind completely subservient to a set of ideas about how the world should be
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i actually think Shapiro is incredibly, sharply intelligent but basically just spends all his time devising the punchiest knockout arguments for a set of pretty standard conservative positions he would never abandon
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