People who identify as "centrists" articulate their biography and information environment — nothing more. People who identify as "radical centrists" do the same, but they spend a lot more time rationalizing their path of least resistance as the heroic one.
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Replying to @generativist
I think you could make nearly the same argument for most radicals of any stripe.
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Replying to @jstogdill
On twitter, anyway.
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Replying to @generativist
lol. Fair point. I'm just saying aren't we all informed by biography and information environment. Or are we bitching about youtube radicalizing the "alt right" for nothing? And the ones, once radicalized, who identify that way out loud, are seeking a heroic acceptance?
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Replying to @jstogdill @generativist
Also, I'm probably a bit sensitive. I don't identify as a centrist, I prefer orthogonal (tongue in cheek) but I don't know if I arrived there by biography, environment, or the realization that I can't find examples of either far right or far left societies I want to live in.
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Replying to @jstogdill
Fair enough. It's almost impossible to separate yourself from either your biography or information environment. (I can't do it.) But the people who reject that premise and identify as a "radical centrist" while celebrating their superior "objectivity" bother me the most.
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Replying to @generativist
I think that's fair. We agree that self righteousness is annoying. Especially since of us know a damned thing really. I mean, how can we? We live in a massively complex emergent system. To pretend to fully understand it is just hubris.
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Replying to @Aelkus @jstogdill
Have you seen any research on how many people identify (and conceive of themselves) as a centrist in the former sense? My intuition says it'd be like 90%, but I'm not even sure how I would measure/solicit that information.
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Like, "I'm a centrist" is used almost indiscriminately as a way of expressing "I'm objective/rational" while implicitly rejecting/eliding some "other" position. That's not really identifiable on a survey.
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