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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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a thing i wonder about is whether we're kidding ourselves in thinking it's even possible to engage in unmotivated 'pure' reasoning. The Righteous Mind by Haidt made me feel that our values largely determine our ideological persuasion & our values may be largely beyond our control

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still, a strong indicator that there's a spectrum ranging from Mind-Fucked to Truly Independent Thinker is that some people clearly update/refine their viewpoints regularly, openly question their own views, admit when they were wrong, etc --- clear signs they're after the truth

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It's a concept so completely without correlates in the real world, it's utter childishness to believe in it sans some very excellent justification.

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but would you agree that there is a spectrum and that some people are much closer to this ideal than others, while other people are much closer to the opposite?

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Of course. But let's not get into how the ideal is logically inconsistent and breaks apart under analysis, so that at best people are better or worse at critical thinking, self-reflection and a few other distinct areas, not rationality per se.