Conversation

I'm starting to think it's intellectual malpractice to write/talk about privilege, class, oppression, etc. without revealing at least 2 generations of family and educational history. There is a suspicious pattern of 2nd/3rd generation privilege joining the privilege commentariat.
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Disagree, that implies you’re relying on basically an appeal to authority. While personal experience is obviously relevant, the whole idea of a book is that we don’t need to rely on biography for authority, we can rely on the logic and data presented to us in long format.
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I'm doing the opposite: probing for hidden bad faith/self-interest that's being deliberately hidden because it's not easy to explain. You're presumptively granting people benefit of doubt for a high degree of self-awareness and intellectual rigor/honesty.
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I’m more arguing that we should judge logic and evidence on its merits and care less about who’s providing the data. But again, this doesn’t apply to cases where the author’s authority is critical, like with personal anecdotes.
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It also doesn't apply where the domain is really complex and opinions are presented in the form of loose narrative arguments with a lot of ideological gesturing. It's not like an analytic philosophy paper where you can trace argument rigorously from presumptions to conclusions.