About a year ago I gave up trying to define “left,” “right,” “liberal,” and “conservative.”
The concepts are too nebulous, and people have strong incentives to distort their meanings. There’s no stable “there” there.
This has been wonderfully liberating.
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Not a real option. It may feel liberating to give up but doesn’t mean there isn’t a there there or that it doesn’t apply to you if don’t define it for yourself. Even patterns of giving up have left/right/lib/con tells.
They’ve gotten convoluted rather than nebulous.
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You’re not interested in politics but politics is interested in you, “culture wars sub you” etc.
A better way to understand what you’re doing is: you’re fine being misclassified and misunderstood for a long time, and have the resources to endure the consequences. Like Amazon.
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I haven’t yet been drafted into the culture wars... will figure out what to do if/when that happens.
In the meantime, I just want to understand things. And the semantic debates have only muddied the waters for me. Waste of mind.
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Good news: You probably won’t be drafted.
I find that semantic debates become clear signal if you assume the territory is actually fairly clear and the debates are FUD deployed (largely unconsciously) by people to obscure where they stand, to avoid consequences where they sit.
Really? I find that people arguing more or less honestly believe what they espouse (modulo constant signaling) BUT they’re basically stupid fools, ignorant of most history and ideas.
Their “debates” have as much content as arguing over iconoclasm.


