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[sebastian_dangerfield]

Maybe you can explain this to me. What is a prohibition on "micro aggressions"? (BTW, it's delightful to put cant you don't agree with in quotation marks while simultaneously tossing around your own cant. Delightful!)

Idk. I cited the article because it listed the nine cognitive deficiencies occurring today which are listed in Haidt's book. The opinions of the author are his.

How does a prohibition on micro aggressions reinforce cognitive distortions and degrade student thinking? Is that argument only true if a prohibition on micro aggressions is meant to prevent students from harm? If hurt feelings don't constitute harm, why not?

I'll skip that word salad and just have the soup.

Reading what you just said is a little like going to a wine tasting and not actually having any wine, but just listening to a guy tell me that one is redolent of blackberries while another has a hint of road tar.

Reading this is like reading someone avoiding a point he doesn't like.

Oh good! Earnest both-sidism!

Calling out false equivalence is the new false equivalence. I can say that. Why? Because it's got just as much validity behind it as your convenient decisions to label something false equivalence. I don't like this point very much... Hmm. False equivalence!

I agree there is some false equivalence out there. I also believe you are abusing the concept for the purpose of appearing to refute something while not actually doing so.

The real point of an argument about what both sides are doing is to signal that the writer is uniquely virtuous.

You're reading minds there, which both Kahneman and Haidt would advise against. You're also wrong, and once again abusing the privilege of criticizing people for both-sidesism.

Wait, a second ago you were recommending this stuff about cognitive distortions, but now they're all playing a game. Which is it?

Everything's a game. If you're making moves based on faulty reasoning, you're playing badly. If you're asserting there should be certain rules based on faulty reasoning, you're playing badly.

Viewing things as a game is not a heuristic that automatically indicates cognitive distortion. Given actions have reactions, this view can be consistent with a logically sound approach to life.

"I'm a cynic, and so is everyone else, but at least I recognize it." Compelling virtue signaling there.

There's nothing cynical about that observation at all. It's simply factual. The intentional actors on the extreme right and left are engaged in nihilistic campaigns.

This is like reading a bad .ppt slide.

But is it wrong? No. So your point is?

At the risk of departing from both-sidism, you have just described two common tropes of political speech which are very different. One is lying. The other is insisting that there is a broader context that is relevant to what is being discussed. Aren't these quite different?

Both are lying. If you insist the author of something is some form of bigot despite clear evidence she is not, you are a liar. If you then refuse to engage her on the subject because you know that would expose your argument that she is a bigot to be a lie, you are a liar doubling down. If you insist she retract her commentary because you don't want anyone to engage it, again because you know such engagement would prove you not only incorrect but a liar, you are a dangerous liar.

That you relabel poor or intentionally bad reasoning as the benign sounding act of "insisting that there is a broader context" does not confer validity on that illogic. You cannot just just call a thing something else (very different from what it actually is) and make it so. (See "Mission Accomplished" or Bush's endless environmentally damaging policies re-named as environmentally friendly policies.)

I believe this is a huge problem in our discourse right now. We (politicians, journalists, people in public life) tend to assume good faith, but you have a significant number of people who are not arguing in good faith.

I agree. Hence, I say the people at the poles are comprised, one half, of intentional actors.

And in the main, this is a conservative thing now.

70/30.

Trump sets the tone. The lying and the conspiracy theories and the gaslighting and the concern trolling and all of it are tools of the right, of conservatives who do it most of all to trigger the libs, and of conservatives who very well understand that they want to do things that are not popular with most of the public, like cut social insurance, cripple health insurance, etc.

Nope. Trump is partly a reaction. The correctness movement was around long before he was. I recall its silliness in the 90s.

The two sides feed off each other. They've been Oceania and Eurasia since the concept of correctness reared its head long ago. Trump has simply taken it to a new level.

If you pretend that both sides are doing it, you are letting conservatives off the hook for this.

There'd be no pretending. There are facts and there are untruths. And if you say both sides are not doing it, you are engaged in spreading untruth.

And if you pretend that the place where this problem is really acute is colleges and universities, you either have a totally warped sense of priorities or you are straining to blame the left for something the right is doing.

I can't speak for Haidt, but I think his critique of colleges stems from the very reasonable position that they are the establishment. Their professors and administration are expected to behave like adults. He never says as much out loud, but it's clearly implied that those on the right are imbeciles, opportunists, and propagandists. There's no point in shaming them.

Exactly. The faux concern about how this stuff is wrecking colleges and universities is exactly that, a conjured up political talking point and not a real thing, since ordinary people can go to college and simply ignore this sort of thing.

If you're careful to take the right courses and to avoid subjects where controversial issues will be raised.

But again, Haidt is writing for a much broader audience. He's explaining why the idiocy we're seeing on the extreme right and extreme left is occurring. He's explaining what's wrong with the minds of these demented people. And like it or not, these people are having a profound political influence, and have been for some time now.