What's far more reasonable and does seem to exist are people who have values that are not the opposite, but weigh the tradeoffs differently. Take for instance someone who is on a diet vs the Grill Dad ideology: a person on a diet can certainly agree with the Grill Dad about food being delicious, but believe that the health effects are net worse.
It needs to be said that Darth Vader is not simply a villain who believes in the force but uses it for evil. He sincerely wants peace for the galaxy. In terms of goals Darth Vader and the Jedi ultimately want the same thing, or at least neither of them want "evil". Where they disagree is he just believes the best way to achieve peace is through gaining power, that's it.
It's essentially a contest of peace through control (order) vs peace through trust (balance), and for that matter the Jedi are not even successful in sustaining their beliefs.
I get what you are saying, but surely their definition of "peace" itself differs quite dramatically.
I venture to say they in fact are not after the same thing, while they may be using the same words. Their use of the word "evil/not good" only serves as a distraction as that is a word used to determine how aligned or misaligned a subject thinks it or some other subject is on our or its way to whatever goal we have in mind, but this doesn't mean the goal is the same if two actors use that word.
What Siths want is autocratic control for its own sake. If they could somehow have robots or whatever handle the galaxy's "peace", they wouldn't suddenly grab a martini and start relaxing on the beach singing beautiful songs of cosmic harmony. They would still exert control in their characteristic sadistic, vindictive ways. They are in it for themselves, they don't care about anything else and I'd argue they are incapable of knowing. They are wired that way. In a way it's sad. They want personal control and personal aggrandizement. When they use the word "peace" they mean "lack of resistence (to me)" and not "freedom from violence and liberty for all".
Jedis fundamentally want a different thing. They don't want to become personal dictators over a faceless populace subjected to their every arbitrary whim. They do want "freedom of violence and liberty for all". They want an order based on rules and those rules must be born out of concern for life itself, not the indiscriminate use of power to get whatever the hell you want when you want it. That's why Siths are obsessed with personal power, not because their aims are equivalent. It's because their aims are not equivalent.
if someone wanted more peace than Vader, Vader would try to kill tht someone. Vader is driven by revenge on the biggest scale, which leaves zero wiggle room for any truth but the one who swayed him when he was at his lowest. he got taken in by a roofie/stockholm syndrome strategy where the swedish part remains obscured by V's blind wrath and his liminal existence as a cripple.
one addition:
control and balance both allow margins of error and variety, the former as a method of quantifying edge cases and the outer rim of the currently controllable system and the latter for survivability and thriving. control permits the next challenges, while variety ensures that at least some approaches don't blow a hole into the hull that can't be fixed by at least somewhat established methods.
peeps like Netanyahu are blinded by some sort of revenge while being taken in by some sort of roofie/stockholm tactic pulled in their youth.
leadership in general on the other hand have all the data telling them how ugly their daddies fucked up so they exert way too much control via maximized systemic fraud and hoarding while referring to established financial mechanisms that are young and erroneous. then there's the phantasy of "cycles" ... as if modern human progress has to care and abide by such a thing ... instead of meeting them head on with control over in-build organic mechanisms ... which again, is the failure of leadership and science, allowing stuff in products that breaks in-build control mechanisms for the economies sake, which is logically retarded beyond belief ... but being a young civilization, it's pointless to blame the misinformed ... and ridiculous that leBuffets of this world say things like "if the people were smarter, we wouldn't make so much money" without turning into moldy tomatoes ...
That is a great question. In the original trilogy, without prequel context, he often makes overtures to Luke about them ruling the galaxy together. Otherwise I don’t think we see a lot about what Vader wants until later when he’s dying. I think then he says something about Luke having given him hope or something, I don’t remember perfectly.
So from the original trilogy alone I think it’s not 100% clear what Vader wants, but there are strong indicators.
Darth Vaders definition of the peace is something like the one Putin has or Nazi had. In the Nazi plan, once they conquer everything, there will be peace and prosperity.
Seems to me there are quite a lot of people for whom the cruelty of what they're doing really is the only point, whatever other arguments they might make.
Sure, in general accusing your opponents of just being You But Evil is boring and betrays a lack of Theory of Mind but consider the people who believe that our modern society with all of its comforts could only occur under the free markets we have but simultaneously believe that these comforts are bad.
“What a caricature! You fool why would anyone believe that! Your opponents are not saying that!”
But what if they are? Famously bananas in winter would not exist and that would be good.
Fortunately, he had the much more long-term sustainable solution of driving a truck full of explosives into a building. Over years of doing this, we will find that bomb trucks will provide green energy and joy to all the poor.
Haha even though I do not agree with his prescriptions or actions, I do think he made a somewhat cohesive description in relation to what you said initially.
In the spirit of the article, do you think it's possible for someone to hold similar views to him and not commit violence?
Well, there’s the hordes on Twitter (which is where I got the bananas thing from) and apart from the Zizians they’re a bit harmless. So there’s that I suppose.
This concept is worthwhile, but the author is so focused on malice that he neglects real examples. For example, I think many people agree with vegans about animals’ capability for suffering, and don’t WANT to increase it, but just don’t consider it worthy of moral consideration. The factual beliefs are the same, but the moral choices are diametrically opposed.
Similarly, many (not all!) conservatives and liberals basically agree about the effects, positive and negative, of immigration. But one side doesn’t want those people here, and one does. You don’t need to have different beliefs about the world to be on exact opposite sides of that issue.
Yeah, it feels like the author introduces an interesting concept, and then intentionally turns it into a ridiculous caricature that cannot possibly be true. But then why introduce it in the first place?
I think there are plenty of meat eaters who agree that animals can suffer, but simply don't care because meat tastes good, which is not something vegans deny, but simply something they consider less important.
Similarly, in climate change, I sometimes get the impression that even if all the science is correct and we are irreversibly changing are world, damaging ecosystems, and creating massive social unrest, refugee crises and war, some people still don't care because they won't be alive by that time and why should people today make even the slightest sacrifice for the people of tomorrow?
And some rich people seem to actively want inequality and exploited poor people.
The author is here and responding to some comments (great article, larsiusprime!). Presumably better than I can. But I think this is the money quote that comes at the end:
> Accusing your opponent of belonging to a Dark Mirror ideology is a weird narcissistic exercise, and a failure to develop a coherent theory of mind. It's also counter-productive.
Dark Mirror ideologies may exist but if you feel tempted to identify your ideological opponent as subscribing to one, you should examine that temptation carefully.
In Tolkien you have Morgoth opposed to Iluvatar, why? They differ on a key contention, which is that Iluvatar thinks he's the only one who gets to determine the shape of the music of creation, Morgoth says "Why's it only you who gets to drive the bus?" and everything falls apart from that deep ideological difference.
In Star Wars you have the Sith opposed to the Jedi, why? They differ on a key contention, which is that the Sith feel you should embrace your passions and the Jedi feel this is a destructive can of worms; to which the Sith respond that the Jedi are just trying to control people and putting a velvet glove around an iron fist, therefore they are no more moral than the Sith.
In real world politics you often have people divided over fundamental concepts like realpolitik and whether the ends justify the means. "Is Problem X so serious that certain sacrifices need to be made?"
The point is that the "Dark Mirror" interpretation in all of these cases would be wrong, nobody says "We have all the same priors, I'm just evil," but they do frequently ascribe that worldview to their enemies. In actuality the counterparties disagree on some very deep-rooted principles, but the character of your average online debate looks something more like "Team X obviously agrees on my same worldview, they're just evil people, so they want to do the bad things!" This is inherently a pretty narcissist way of looking things, there is no effort to understand what the other side is really trying to accomplish, and even if you're utterly committed to destroying them either way, "Know Thy Enemy" is still good advice. So the Dark Mirror approach to ideas you don't like is ultimately self-defeating.
It's interesting (and troubling) how these ragebaiting, Dark Mirror style positions used to be a bit less common but with the advent of social media have absolutely exploded into the dominant form of political discourse that now determines elections.
Minor objection - Morgoth doesn't just want his own creation, when he can't have it he sets out to torture and destroy the one that's being made. That's definitely a difference of morality.
> It's interesting (and troubling) how these ragebaiting, Dark Mirror style positions used to be a bit less common but with the advent of social media have absolutely exploded into the dominant form of political discourse that now determines elections.
I think that's because it really has become more common to support certain politics merely out of opposition to other people. There are people who seem to support Trump not because they actually believe what he says, but merely because he hates the right kind of people. There are people who seem to just want to "make libs cry" even if it hurts themselves.
I suppose the real ideological difference there may be that they see their political opponents as inherently evil and they believe they need to be punished at any cost, but at some point it becomes nearly indistinguishable from a dark mirror.
I think the algorithm promotes simple, low information, angry takes more than it does nuanced, thoughtful ones.
I really think that's all it is. Quick strong feels = press the engagement button = algorithm shows the content to more people. There is an exponential effect.
I agree, I had the same thought about the vegan example.
The premise of dark mirror ideologies is interesting if you don't consider the moral inversion to be an exact mirroring. TFA even gave the anti minimum wage example at the beginning, which is not an exact mirroring (scoring political points & looking generous != enjoying killing businesses).
If dark mirror ideologies is supposed to be more like the main examples (dark veganism, dark liberals, etc.) then I'm afraid all TFA has discovered is that the no ideology has "being evil" as their priority.
I think you're missing the author's point, which is made in the last three paragraphs.
The point is exactly that these diametrically opposed ideologies do not actually exist, but that ideologues often paint their opponents that way.
A typical example is seen among the more extreme pro-choice activists. They frequently make claims like "It's not about protecting babies, they [pro-life people] just want to control women's bodies".
> A typical example is seen among the more extreme pro-choice activists. They frequently make claims like "It's not about protecting babies, they [pro-life people] just want to control women's bodies".
There is actually plenty of evidence for that claim. Some so-called pro-life politicians are not meaningfully pro-life except in their opposition to abortion rights, do not support other measures like sex ed or contraception that would reduce abortions, are fine with letting pregnant women die, and some have even pressured their mistress to have an abortion despite opposing abortion rights politically. Everything points to it being more about denying freedom to women than about actually caring about unborn life.
For some at least. But their number is not small. This can also be seen by the criminalisation of miscarriages, and women being forced to risk their life to bear a dead fetus to term. Those measures are absolutely about controlling women and do nothing to protect unborn life.
In fact, there seems to be an increasing number of issues where especially US Republicans' position seems entirely based on simply opposing whatever the Democrats want on principle. Look at coal rollers; in what kind of world view does that make sense? A few years ago they voted to increase military expenditures above what the military asked for, and the military had no idea what to even do with that money.
That is an ad-hominem in terms of whether abortion should be allowed or not, and to what term it should be allowed.
It may be a reason for not voting for a particular politician (because motivation matters in office). It does not affect - should abortion, or abortion under these circumstances, be allowed.
Also, most people who feel strongly about the issue (i.e. not politicians) do either believe that unborn babies have human rights (most often that they are able to feel pain, respond etc. therefore they have rights) or that fetuses are just clumps of cells. I am not saying there are no exceptions, but there is a very strong correlation between these beliefs and their stance on abortion.
it is striking that anglophone western countries (where the demonising of those who disagree is trongest) tend to either not allowing abortion at all, or having very late term limits (even up to birth) whereas as almost of continental Europe has about 12/13 week limits, a compromise most people think is OK.
> A few years ago they voted to increase military expenditures above what the military asked for, and the military had no idea what to even do with that money.
Given the current state of the world that sounds like they were right!
That's not what an ad-hominem is. An ad-hominem means attacking the person instead of the issue. If I'm saying Trump's economic policies are bad because he's a clown who paints his face orange, that's an ad-hominem and you'd be right to dismiss the argument.
What I did was exactly the opposite: I mentioned specific positions and actions that show that they're not sincere about their stated reasons. But it comes from their own stated actions and positions. And the fact that these have recently become enshrined in law, with quite horrifying consequences, makes this all the more visible and relevant.
> Also, most people who feel strongly about the issue (i.e. not politicians) do either believe that unborn babies have human rights (most often that they are able to feel pain, respond etc. therefore they have rights) or that fetuses are just clumps of cells. I am not saying there are no exceptions, but there is a very strong correlation between these beliefs and their stance on abortion.
Oh, there are many exceptions. In fact, I'm pretty certain the vast majority of people are in between, and almost nobody believes either of those extremes. What people call "clumps of cells" are not fetuses but embryos.
And almost nobody really believes that unborn fetus have the same rights as living persons, because if they did, graveyards would be filled with gravestones of the many embryos and fetuses who died in miscarriages. Miscarriages are still incredibly common, and nobody names them or holds funerals for them. They're not officially recorded as people in any official register. Historically, legally, morally and biblically, personhood has always, always started at birth.
Of course that doesn't mean that people don't care about fetuses at all; obviously they do. Nobody has an abortion just for the heck of it. Even the most ardent pro-choice supporters do care about unborn life, and most do want to reduce the number of abortions. They just don't think the rights of unborn life trumps the rights of living people. They believe people, even women, should have the right to control their own bodies.
The simple fact of the matter is that some anti-abortion laws force women to risk their own lives, and sometimes even force them to die, even when there is no viable fetus anymore. Women have been denied life-saving medical care, have been denied the right to travel while pregnant, and women have died needlessly because of these laws.
And explaining these facts has not helped. The only reasonable conclusion is that the supporters of these laws just want women to suffer. And there is plenty of evidence outside the abortion issue that also supports that.
> it is striking that anglophone western countries (where the demonising of those who disagree is trongest) tend to either not allowing abortion at all, or having very late term limits (even up to birth)
Abortion of a healthy pregnancy during the third trimester is extremely rare. Nobody carries a healthy fetus for half a year and suddenly decides to get rid of it. This is a caricature that's often used to justify the kind of inhuman full abortion bans that kill women, but it's a situation that either doesn't happen or is extremely rare. The issue is that it should be possible to abort a pregnancy that's gone bad, and that women shouldn't go to prison for having a miscarriage. (Almost?) nowhere in Europe will a woman be forced to carry a dead fetus to term, but that has happened in the US.
> Given the current state of the world that sounds like they were right!
Not if there's nothing to sensibly spend it on. There's tons of waste and corruption in the US military, and yet that's the one part of government that seems to be completely exempt from Musk's chainsaw.
I think the OP's point is that there are more "dark mirror ideologies" than the author claims, because the author was focused on examples that are too extreme (and therefore rare). The OP is showing that there are more reasonable oppositions that appear to fit the dark mirror definition and are not simply a false accusation.
Author here. I’ll grant “gray mirrors” without a fight. (Ideologies that admit to the same facts but one side just doesn’t care; multiply by zero instead of negative one).
Also note in the article I cop to at least one salient example being real
My main point is not to say dark/gray mirrors don’t exist, just that it should never be your first explanation. Your opponent tends to want things for their reasons, not yours, and the better you understand them the better you can oppose them. That’s it.
I'm pretty sure the reps also want immigrants just for their benefit.
Also often enough there are 'good immigrants' and 'bad immigrants'. JD Vance wife is an immigrant. Trumps wife too.
In Europe you see the same thing often enough too: "I'm not a nazi, i have a partner/friends which are from <another country>".
In my opionion the core difference is the idiology: Left people want to help and support and assume that immigrants are normal human beings which can be part of our country but of course don't want to have an immigrant killing people and raping and being shitty people. But their view point comes from the good side.
The right wing people hate immigrants as a default and come from the bad side. Which allows them also to have 'good' immigrants.
Nonetheless, i also think its an educational issue and value system issue: the left see it as a human right to be a human and having a fair chance, helping others and potentially also see that the world is not isolated. Like when the USA produces a lot of co2 which makes people across the world environment bad, they have some type of valid reason to move to the USA.
Because I don't side with either left or right. Both did good things and bad things. Because I think there are useful left policies and useful right policies.
I can’t say this is true, but it seems to me that Peter Theil views René Girard’s ideas on scapegoats and mimetic theory as correct, but views them not as an identification of the flaws we must outgrow as a species, but as a feature to be used to control and rule.
Descriptions cannot directly lead to prescriptions. Values come from you (the subject).
'Junk food is bad for your health' is a description, but who is it that decides that health is more important than pleasure? The prescription 'Don't eat junk food' is rooted in a value (e.g. that health is more important than pleasure), but you have the freedom to simply reject that value. How much moderation we should have is subjective.
So basically mirror in author's view presumes two groups with the same set of beliefs, they agree on the phenomena, they agree on validity of certain laws, they even agree on the ultimate outcome. They only differ on the nature of the outcome, one group thinking it's good, one group thinking it's bad.
For me, that's not actually a mirror. A mirror effect will change everything to 180 degrees, not just some parts.
A figure of speech is not a formula which must be literally interpreted. Sometimes doing so is interesting, but I don’t think this is one of those times.
> Even should you go to the ends of the earth and find some weird fringe sect that strictly professes perfect classical trinitarian doctrine, but also that God is bad actually
Satan (and atheists) seem to spend more time claiming that they are God; that their subjective truth trumps objective Truth.
What is the difference between subjective truth and objective truth? Do you have a telephone line to god or some other entity that will tell you Objective Truth?
Its a simple question either you have a telephone line to Objective Truth or you don't. If you don't have a telephone line to Objective Truth, you are bsing and trying to pass off your Subjective Truth as Objective Truth. Otherwise all truths are the best approximations we get from Subjective Experience. On matters of this fundamental level, high level of rigor is even more important, if you fail to provide that then it should be completely dismissed. Such a fundamental basis of thought cannot be left to wishy washy nonsense.
You're at liberty to go the Full Bertrand Russell with the rejection of the "wishy washy" all you like; Objective Truth is always going to bring along a Kurt Gödel.
Whether or not you buy off on the notion that Objective Truth paid a visit a couple millenia back and was crucified for explaining that Truth to humanity remains a subjective matter.
It has to remain subjective, lest it tampered with your free will to reject that Objective Truth.
We all get to own our response to that Onjective Truth, free and clear.
One anticipates that this reply will stand rejected as "wishy washy" for having failed to externalize something that does not yield to externalization. All I can say is: best wishes to you, sir.
If a thing close to an objective truth exists, there is no reason that it would preclude freedom to reject it. Flat earthers won't exist otherwise.
The kind of thing you are falsely calling "objective truth", there have been thousands that have passed, and dozens still active that still claim to be also the same type of "objective truth". All of them contradict each other and are blatantly wrong even on really basic matters. It doesn't even try to be objective truth, any attempts to even make it so are treated by the response that one needs "Faith and Belief". Not just yours, all of them.
And even if we ignore the fact that these were sociopolitical movements primarily, even if we take that people were trying really in earnest to find truth, again its ridiculous and disproved by thousands of examples to believe men 2000 years ago could find the "final truth". Much better attempts at this goal, via the physical sciences, have been refined or disproven over the centuries, let alone what those men were doing.
Your problem is that there are thousands of similar "truths" in the past and dozens currently active in the present. Which is true? None of them are able to show theirs is true and the others are wrong.
The problem with these groups is that they are taking a really hard problem and going the opposite direction of feasible ways to begin solving it. Mathematics and the physical sciences came the closest, after much pain and effort. And these groups have as yet only been able to contradict each other and each claim to be the ultimate truth.
I have another somewhat related observation. If you don't think or don't know how to think about your ideas your broadly (because the communication is saturated, or you lack any context), your opponents often get to dictate your beliefs. This is when you know either them or what their propaganda describes as the worst caricatural evil.
For a model example, you are a peasant in old Christian Europe, you don't know any learned humanism or anything like that, so you turn to witchcraft--as it is described by the preachers to you. Also it is common among young people who can be raised in a very controlled environment where the authority figures shut out any opposing views: so either you submit, or your only alternative is the (often objectively) horrible things they describe as the enemy. Of course they won't tell you there are other options besides that, and you are very unlikely to come up with them by yourself.
I would also say this plays a role in the society's spiral of internet radicalization. People rarely know basic boring political theory and ideologies, non-ragebait history post WW2 etc. If you are fully jacked into twitter-likes like that, your worldview is gonna largely consist of someone's Satans adopted out of ignorance and spite.
> Dark Liberals agree that democratic institutions, free speech, a free press, human rights, tolerance for differences, and a cultural melting pot are all essential parts of maintaining a free society
Honest question - is the "cultural melting pot" thing considered a liberal ideology in the USA, now? It was my impression that nowadays its considered an offensive bad thing, not "a strength of the USA".
Yes. I would be curious to hear what formed your impression that it is now considered an offensive bad thing. I have some ideas of course, but none are reflective of the reality of the worldviews of most city or even suburb-dwelling US people. If anything, the cultural melting pot thing has never been stronger.
> Yes. I would be curious to hear what formed your impression that it is now considered an offensive bad thing.
I don't know, TBH. I think friends from US told me to be careful, that it's now politically incorrect to mention it, especially to express support for it/imply that it's a good thing? I don't live there so I wouldn't know for sure, especially given that when I interact with US colleagues I generally try to steer away from more potentially "touchy" subjects. I did notice myself that it's best to avoid some subjects in the US corporate world, since you never know what may be offensive. Or well, I don't, perhaps it's a me-problem.
(it's probably also that I don't understand all the local implications and sensibilities. Like, for me "melting pot" means the ability to take immigrants from all over the world, and turn them into "americans" with roughly the same culture & set of values. That, for me is unequivocally a _good_ thing, I think it's generally recognized that conflict at values-level is the most difficult one to resolve/ it's basically unresolvable. You can't have a nation working together if large parts of it have different set of values, that's just a recipe for internal divisions and long-term problems. Or anyway, that's my general line of thinking, that's why I personally have always felt that the "melting pot" was one of the best things US did, and did better than e.g. France or other nations. But I do recognize that there might be other problems associated with that, in the minds of US citizens; and being subjected to the "melting pot" can't be easy/pleasant for everyone, it's in the end about modifying/tweaking your identity so that's gotta be a hard process)
Thanks for the reply. I think I mostly follow your elaboration.
Topics like DEI have definitely become a much more touchy subject in the last 2 years or so, and that they are not discussed as much in "official" channels as they previously were, but that the practices are mostly still there and are generally still considered a positive thing to most people.
It might just be semantics, but I do think your definition of melting pot is slightly off, in that in the US, there is no real consensus of what "the same culture & set of values' actually means. The US is still a very young country. The only "native" culture here was colonized and mostly erased by white settlers. The population of people here can largely be defined by different waves of historical immigration from other parts of the world. Culture and values here are more of two-way street, where they tend to be mixed and matched in the "melting pot" type environments that have popped up all over the country. Now with that being said, most recently we have found ourselves in a situation where an extremely vocal (and quite incoherent IMHO) minority of people against rising waves of multiculturalism have come into power and started controlling the narrative, but I would say that they are not representative of most US citizens, and that the only reason why this has happened is because 90 million people were too apathetic and mentally lazy to defend against it when given the opportunity. I'm still struggling to understand what that says about the US as a people, but I really don't think that as many of us are as wrapped up in identity politics as it might seem like we are from the outside.
Oh come on. The amerindian/indigenous culture has (almost) _nothing_ to do with US culture, which is very much a thing. In fact, it's so much a thing that US almost had a "cultural victory". Part of the cold war victory was US cultural victory, because people all over the world aspired to the american dream. Hollywood movies are some of the most watched entertainment worldwide. English is the world's lingua franca because of the US, not UK (well, UK, but indirectly via US). All the american problems and internal conflicts will spill over to the world - or at least western world - sooner or later (it's unbelievable how much university environment in say, Germany is influenced by what is happening in the US universities; identity politics recently became a thing in Romania, when it seemed to be completely gone and irrelevant).
Don't kid yourself, USA absolutely has a very strong and well defined (and influential) culture. Not in that each citizen is the same, but that there are clear patterns, societal norms, generally-shared values etc. I'll take just one example: there are a lot of Indians in the US, AFAIK. They _largely_ don't have arranged marriages in US (definitely not 90% of the US citizens of Indian heritage!).
I think in some particularly race concious circles it can be seen as eliding the US's historical and modern problems with bigotry. I don't think it would genuinely provoke anyone but I wouldn't be surprised if someone took it as an opportunity to lecture.
I don’t get the melting pot trope. America is basically identical everywhere. From education to healthcare, sports to entertainment, adverts to politicians.
You may wish to look up what "Fordism" is, the history behind it, and of course the many sociological critiques of t. That will likely give enough context to explain where that trope came from (and also why it's more of a thing in the US than anywhere else)
I think that's just the Overton window having shifted over time.
I believe the "cultural melting pot" used to be perceived as more politically neutral in the 1990s but it always came with a lot of asterisks. There's even that famous Superman poster about diversity from 1949[0] - despite the obvious incongruity with the Japanese internment camps and overall anti-Asian sentiments (although the Magnuson Act in 1943 had at least partially repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act by then because China became an ally to the US during WW2), racist sentiments towards Hispanic/Latin Americans and of course the ongoing racial segregation at the time.
I don't think we'll see "wokeness" be rolled back all the way to perceiving Irish immigrants as subhuman again, but most of these cultural points exist on a sliding scale rather than being fixed in time permanently.
Case in point, that infamous 1981 Atwater interview about the Southern Strategy[1], which was a Republican strategy built primarily on appealing to racist sentiments in the Southern US states.
We're not quite at the point where it's acceptable to explicitly target segments of the population by name so you'll instead hear politicians talk about "illegals" when talking about an overall reduction in immigration (including "legal" migration) and "criminals" when talking about the need for deportations (without trials or convictions) because to those who agree it is clear that these are shorthands the same way "welfare queens" and "urban crime" were shorthands in the Southern Strategy, whereas for those who disagree you can always fall back to the literal definition to defend your politics.
As an aside, I think this is one of two big problems with the article's appeal to theory of mind - the other being that most people don't have a coherent political framework and thus hold mutually contradictory political positions in different contexts: politicians and pundits can and do lie. While nearly every human assumes they are the good guy of their narrative and wants to do the right thing relative to their views of good and bad, sometimes that can include just blatantly lying. And sometimes people whose job it is to talk politics not only lie, they assume everyone else alongside of them is also lying, not presenting their own deeply held convictions.
I'm sure this isn't the case but sometimes it feels like debate culture plays into this because the way competitive debates are held removes any sense of actual conviction from the points being argued by focussing entirely on the technique, not truth value or ideological consistency or moral frameworks. You could personally oppose the death penalty but still find yourself having to argue for it if that's the position you're assigned - and sure, in theory this can help better understanding the other side but at the same time it feels like this arbitrariness and moral flexibility also rewards a level of detachment from the concrete issues that seems deeply troubling.
So Open Source is like a dark mirror version of Free Software.
Open Source thinks that there's benefit in programs being free, but also that defending their freedom is actually a bad thing.
Open source self describes its value system as being freedom for developers, free software self describes its value system as being freedom for users.
Most open source grants users far more freedoms than proprietary software, for instance, though not maximal freedoms. It’s not opposed to user freedom (“that’s bad actually”) it’s just not the goal being optimized for.
I think it’s a fallacy to accuse them of being dark mirrors of each other for the reasons stated in the blog post. They have different worldviews and different goals, they don’t just take each other’s goals and multiply them by negative one.
Open source doesn’t try to intentionally restrict users, it just trades off against their maximal freedom in favor of maximal developer freedom.
Free software doesn’t intentionally try to encumber developers, it just trades off against their maximal freedom in favor of users maximal freedom.
We can more limited variants of the dark mirror ideology though. For example, we can imagine someone who believes all the tenets of Marxian Communism and uses the analysis to maximize his own advantage, so that he if he is a large property owner ends up doing all the things that Marxists expect large property owners to do-- perhaps he even pushes a liberal ideology in public, but this kind of limited-dark-Marxism in private.
I think the dark liberalism of this essay is a real ideology commonly held by marginal dictators, think Lukashenko. I also don't think this kind of limited-dark-Marxism is unusual.
Ideologies, in the usual sense, are just thinking systematically and critically about what you want and why.
Some people don't like to look to closely at that. This is understandable. I think it relates to what Popper called "the strain of civilization". Knowing that here are countless people out there who don't know you, don't care about you, and worst of all, don't care about the things that are most deeply meaningful to you.
Everyone who's not completely oblivious, feels that strain. And rejecting "ideologies" is one way to cope. One of the three basic ways.
"The greatest trick the devil ever played on mankind is to believe you can be free from ideology." Alternatively: "If you don't have an ideology, you just end up creating your own inconsistent ad hoc ideology from scratch."
I'm not sure who first started promoting the lie of being "free from ideology" or ideology being bad, although I could imagine it being tied directly to the rise of Third Way politics (e.g. New Labour in the UK) - which, ironically, very much is a political ideology (although one so incoherented and conflicted it has fallen victim to right-wing populism throughout the West). Actually the Democratic Party's politics (think Obama and Biden, not AOC and Sanders) generally closely align with Third Way politics.
I can understand opposition to ideologues as the term is usually applied when talking about people who only talk about their ideology rather than applying their ideology directly (e.g. I could at lengths explain the ideas behind Democratic Confederalism or Anarchism but that would do nothing to help with concrete policy decisions in the present system or day-to-day problems in real life). After all, when people say e.g. "Trump says it like it is" they don't mean he speaks the truth but that he talks about problems people perceive as directly affecting them and then talks about things he wants to do about them (whether or not they're helpful for addressing those problems is beside the point) - the distinction is that he offers a concrete solution at all rather than waffling on about the spirit of the light of the hope of the nation at the dawn of the greatness etc etc. Ironically this waffling is actually compensating for a lack of an explicit ideology but it is indeed quite off-putting.
Do you have an example of an ideology for which most people in the world agree it produced more good than harm?
Why should I trust an ideology? Why should I buy into a fixed set of doctrines? Supposedly, an ideology is not a religion, so faith shouldn't be an argument.
Adopting a fixed view of the world doesn't allow me to be pragmatic. It doesn't allow me to adapt in a dynamic and ever changing world.
And most of the times something isn't absolutely bad or good, but it depends on a set of factors. Immigration can be good in some circumstances and bad in other. Taxes can be good in some circumstances and bad in other.
I might value both ideas which can be on the left or the right side of the political spectrum.
Usually ideologies are promising some kind of Paradise on Earth and saving something. But the results are mostly loss of freedoms which is justified by the supposedly "greater good".
Also, ideologues and activists doesn't produce anything of value for society, they just are into convincing people into following their ways. While they are benefiting greatly from it.
>If you don't have an ideology, you just end up creating your own inconsistent ad hoc ideology from scratch.
I'm not sure that is accurate (when applied to individuals). If we define an ideology as a way of assigning moral value to things that is comprehensive enough so that almost any decision can be viewed through "the ideological lens", then some people are many orders of magnitude less influenced by ideologies than other people are.
What is futile is to ignore or prevent the effects of ideologies on a society or a large organization because people who share an ideology cooperate much more effectively than people who do not, and this has powerful effects on politics and the management of organizations.
There are many ways to define opposites. This author demands that the "dark mirror" person wants the exact opposite, but that is way too specific in my opinion.
Then it's more interesting with cases like William Cowper. Who certainly believed in anything a Christian in his time and place was supposed to believe, including double predestination. It's just that unlike most who believed that, he was convinced he was predestined for hell. He didn't go around doing evil things, of course, what would be the point of that? But he was very, very distressed.
Likewise, I think the author underestimates how much Marxist historical materialism was viewed as a hard science in much of the world, until the cold war. There were certainly capitalists who were terrified it was true, but could not see any way out of it for themselves, because just like Cowper's double predestination, orthodox Marxism denies that there is such a thing.
What's far more reasonable and does seem to exist are people who have values that are not the opposite, but weigh the tradeoffs differently. Take for instance someone who is on a diet vs the Grill Dad ideology: a person on a diet can certainly agree with the Grill Dad about food being delicious, but believe that the health effects are net worse.
It needs to be said that Darth Vader is not simply a villain who believes in the force but uses it for evil. He sincerely wants peace for the galaxy. In terms of goals Darth Vader and the Jedi ultimately want the same thing, or at least neither of them want "evil". Where they disagree is he just believes the best way to achieve peace is through gaining power, that's it.
It's essentially a contest of peace through control (order) vs peace through trust (balance), and for that matter the Jedi are not even successful in sustaining their beliefs.
I get what you are saying, but surely their definition of "peace" itself differs quite dramatically.
I venture to say they in fact are not after the same thing, while they may be using the same words. Their use of the word "evil/not good" only serves as a distraction as that is a word used to determine how aligned or misaligned a subject thinks it or some other subject is on our or its way to whatever goal we have in mind, but this doesn't mean the goal is the same if two actors use that word.
What Siths want is autocratic control for its own sake. If they could somehow have robots or whatever handle the galaxy's "peace", they wouldn't suddenly grab a martini and start relaxing on the beach singing beautiful songs of cosmic harmony. They would still exert control in their characteristic sadistic, vindictive ways. They are in it for themselves, they don't care about anything else and I'd argue they are incapable of knowing. They are wired that way. In a way it's sad. They want personal control and personal aggrandizement. When they use the word "peace" they mean "lack of resistence (to me)" and not "freedom from violence and liberty for all".
Jedis fundamentally want a different thing. They don't want to become personal dictators over a faceless populace subjected to their every arbitrary whim. They do want "freedom of violence and liberty for all". They want an order based on rules and those rules must be born out of concern for life itself, not the indiscriminate use of power to get whatever the hell you want when you want it. That's why Siths are obsessed with personal power, not because their aims are equivalent. It's because their aims are not equivalent.
The Sith really need to get a comms guy in to look at their branding and messaging strategy
Just cool it with the evil laughs, ok?
I just noticed... All our Sith Lords wear black.
Are we the baddies?
Finally! Someone who sees his true motives. Never, was there ever a more misunderstood figure.
if someone wanted more peace than Vader, Vader would try to kill tht someone. Vader is driven by revenge on the biggest scale, which leaves zero wiggle room for any truth but the one who swayed him when he was at his lowest. he got taken in by a roofie/stockholm syndrome strategy where the swedish part remains obscured by V's blind wrath and his liminal existence as a cripple.
one addition:
control and balance both allow margins of error and variety, the former as a method of quantifying edge cases and the outer rim of the currently controllable system and the latter for survivability and thriving. control permits the next challenges, while variety ensures that at least some approaches don't blow a hole into the hull that can't be fixed by at least somewhat established methods.
peeps like Netanyahu are blinded by some sort of revenge while being taken in by some sort of roofie/stockholm tactic pulled in their youth.
leadership in general on the other hand have all the data telling them how ugly their daddies fucked up so they exert way too much control via maximized systemic fraud and hoarding while referring to established financial mechanisms that are young and erroneous. then there's the phantasy of "cycles" ... as if modern human progress has to care and abide by such a thing ... instead of meeting them head on with control over in-build organic mechanisms ... which again, is the failure of leadership and science, allowing stuff in products that breaks in-build control mechanisms for the economies sake, which is logically retarded beyond belief ... but being a young civilization, it's pointless to blame the misinformed ... and ridiculous that leBuffets of this world say things like "if the people were smarter, we wouldn't make so much money" without turning into moldy tomatoes ...
> He sincerely wants peace for the galaxy.
I understand this is probably prequel or EU lore, but I wonder if this claim can be justified using only the original trilogy.
That is a great question. In the original trilogy, without prequel context, he often makes overtures to Luke about them ruling the galaxy together. Otherwise I don’t think we see a lot about what Vader wants until later when he’s dying. I think then he says something about Luke having given him hope or something, I don’t remember perfectly.
So from the original trilogy alone I think it’s not 100% clear what Vader wants, but there are strong indicators.
Darth Vaders definition of the peace is something like the one Putin has or Nazi had. In the Nazi plan, once they conquer everything, there will be peace and prosperity.
It is NOT the same thing.
Seems to me there are quite a lot of people for whom the cruelty of what they're doing really is the only point, whatever other arguments they might make.
Sure, in general accusing your opponents of just being You But Evil is boring and betrays a lack of Theory of Mind but consider the people who believe that our modern society with all of its comforts could only occur under the free markets we have but simultaneously believe that these comforts are bad.
“What a caricature! You fool why would anyone believe that! Your opponents are not saying that!”
But what if they are? Famously bananas in winter would not exist and that would be good.
Ted Kaczynski argued that such a system is unsustainable long-term.
Fortunately, he had the much more long-term sustainable solution of driving a truck full of explosives into a building. Over years of doing this, we will find that bomb trucks will provide green energy and joy to all the poor.
I think you're thinking of Timothy McVeigh.
Haha, absolutely correct. I suppose the crucial difference in sustainability is using trucks as bombs or just bombing without.
Haha even though I do not agree with his prescriptions or actions, I do think he made a somewhat cohesive description in relation to what you said initially.
In the spirit of the article, do you think it's possible for someone to hold similar views to him and not commit violence?
Well, there’s the hordes on Twitter (which is where I got the bananas thing from) and apart from the Zizians they’re a bit harmless. So there’s that I suppose.
I really like the example of dark grill dads. Not only because it's funny, but it's strikingly memorable and gets the point across.
The absurdity of it really sells the idea.
This concept is worthwhile, but the author is so focused on malice that he neglects real examples. For example, I think many people agree with vegans about animals’ capability for suffering, and don’t WANT to increase it, but just don’t consider it worthy of moral consideration. The factual beliefs are the same, but the moral choices are diametrically opposed.
Similarly, many (not all!) conservatives and liberals basically agree about the effects, positive and negative, of immigration. But one side doesn’t want those people here, and one does. You don’t need to have different beliefs about the world to be on exact opposite sides of that issue.
Yeah, it feels like the author introduces an interesting concept, and then intentionally turns it into a ridiculous caricature that cannot possibly be true. But then why introduce it in the first place?
I think there are plenty of meat eaters who agree that animals can suffer, but simply don't care because meat tastes good, which is not something vegans deny, but simply something they consider less important.
Similarly, in climate change, I sometimes get the impression that even if all the science is correct and we are irreversibly changing are world, damaging ecosystems, and creating massive social unrest, refugee crises and war, some people still don't care because they won't be alive by that time and why should people today make even the slightest sacrifice for the people of tomorrow?
And some rich people seem to actively want inequality and exploited poor people.
The author is here and responding to some comments (great article, larsiusprime!). Presumably better than I can. But I think this is the money quote that comes at the end:
> Accusing your opponent of belonging to a Dark Mirror ideology is a weird narcissistic exercise, and a failure to develop a coherent theory of mind. It's also counter-productive.
Dark Mirror ideologies may exist but if you feel tempted to identify your ideological opponent as subscribing to one, you should examine that temptation carefully.
In Tolkien you have Morgoth opposed to Iluvatar, why? They differ on a key contention, which is that Iluvatar thinks he's the only one who gets to determine the shape of the music of creation, Morgoth says "Why's it only you who gets to drive the bus?" and everything falls apart from that deep ideological difference.
In Star Wars you have the Sith opposed to the Jedi, why? They differ on a key contention, which is that the Sith feel you should embrace your passions and the Jedi feel this is a destructive can of worms; to which the Sith respond that the Jedi are just trying to control people and putting a velvet glove around an iron fist, therefore they are no more moral than the Sith.
In real world politics you often have people divided over fundamental concepts like realpolitik and whether the ends justify the means. "Is Problem X so serious that certain sacrifices need to be made?"
The point is that the "Dark Mirror" interpretation in all of these cases would be wrong, nobody says "We have all the same priors, I'm just evil," but they do frequently ascribe that worldview to their enemies. In actuality the counterparties disagree on some very deep-rooted principles, but the character of your average online debate looks something more like "Team X obviously agrees on my same worldview, they're just evil people, so they want to do the bad things!" This is inherently a pretty narcissist way of looking things, there is no effort to understand what the other side is really trying to accomplish, and even if you're utterly committed to destroying them either way, "Know Thy Enemy" is still good advice. So the Dark Mirror approach to ideas you don't like is ultimately self-defeating.
It's interesting (and troubling) how these ragebaiting, Dark Mirror style positions used to be a bit less common but with the advent of social media have absolutely exploded into the dominant form of political discourse that now determines elections.
Minor objection - Morgoth doesn't just want his own creation, when he can't have it he sets out to torture and destroy the one that's being made. That's definitely a difference of morality.
Yes, he's a poor sport when he loses. But the description of the original source of friction is accurate.
> It's interesting (and troubling) how these ragebaiting, Dark Mirror style positions used to be a bit less common but with the advent of social media have absolutely exploded into the dominant form of political discourse that now determines elections.
I think that's because it really has become more common to support certain politics merely out of opposition to other people. There are people who seem to support Trump not because they actually believe what he says, but merely because he hates the right kind of people. There are people who seem to just want to "make libs cry" even if it hurts themselves.
I suppose the real ideological difference there may be that they see their political opponents as inherently evil and they believe they need to be punished at any cost, but at some point it becomes nearly indistinguishable from a dark mirror.
I think the algorithm promotes simple, low information, angry takes more than it does nuanced, thoughtful ones.
I really think that's all it is. Quick strong feels = press the engagement button = algorithm shows the content to more people. There is an exponential effect.
I agree, I had the same thought about the vegan example.
The premise of dark mirror ideologies is interesting if you don't consider the moral inversion to be an exact mirroring. TFA even gave the anti minimum wage example at the beginning, which is not an exact mirroring (scoring political points & looking generous != enjoying killing businesses).
If dark mirror ideologies is supposed to be more like the main examples (dark veganism, dark liberals, etc.) then I'm afraid all TFA has discovered is that the no ideology has "being evil" as their priority.
I think you're missing the author's point, which is made in the last three paragraphs.
The point is exactly that these diametrically opposed ideologies do not actually exist, but that ideologues often paint their opponents that way.
A typical example is seen among the more extreme pro-choice activists. They frequently make claims like "It's not about protecting babies, they [pro-life people] just want to control women's bodies".
> A typical example is seen among the more extreme pro-choice activists. They frequently make claims like "It's not about protecting babies, they [pro-life people] just want to control women's bodies".
There is actually plenty of evidence for that claim. Some so-called pro-life politicians are not meaningfully pro-life except in their opposition to abortion rights, do not support other measures like sex ed or contraception that would reduce abortions, are fine with letting pregnant women die, and some have even pressured their mistress to have an abortion despite opposing abortion rights politically. Everything points to it being more about denying freedom to women than about actually caring about unborn life.
For some at least. But their number is not small. This can also be seen by the criminalisation of miscarriages, and women being forced to risk their life to bear a dead fetus to term. Those measures are absolutely about controlling women and do nothing to protect unborn life.
In fact, there seems to be an increasing number of issues where especially US Republicans' position seems entirely based on simply opposing whatever the Democrats want on principle. Look at coal rollers; in what kind of world view does that make sense? A few years ago they voted to increase military expenditures above what the military asked for, and the military had no idea what to even do with that money.
That is an ad-hominem in terms of whether abortion should be allowed or not, and to what term it should be allowed.
It may be a reason for not voting for a particular politician (because motivation matters in office). It does not affect - should abortion, or abortion under these circumstances, be allowed.
Also, most people who feel strongly about the issue (i.e. not politicians) do either believe that unborn babies have human rights (most often that they are able to feel pain, respond etc. therefore they have rights) or that fetuses are just clumps of cells. I am not saying there are no exceptions, but there is a very strong correlation between these beliefs and their stance on abortion.
it is striking that anglophone western countries (where the demonising of those who disagree is trongest) tend to either not allowing abortion at all, or having very late term limits (even up to birth) whereas as almost of continental Europe has about 12/13 week limits, a compromise most people think is OK.
> A few years ago they voted to increase military expenditures above what the military asked for, and the military had no idea what to even do with that money.
Given the current state of the world that sounds like they were right!
That's not what an ad-hominem is. An ad-hominem means attacking the person instead of the issue. If I'm saying Trump's economic policies are bad because he's a clown who paints his face orange, that's an ad-hominem and you'd be right to dismiss the argument.
What I did was exactly the opposite: I mentioned specific positions and actions that show that they're not sincere about their stated reasons. But it comes from their own stated actions and positions. And the fact that these have recently become enshrined in law, with quite horrifying consequences, makes this all the more visible and relevant.
> Also, most people who feel strongly about the issue (i.e. not politicians) do either believe that unborn babies have human rights (most often that they are able to feel pain, respond etc. therefore they have rights) or that fetuses are just clumps of cells. I am not saying there are no exceptions, but there is a very strong correlation between these beliefs and their stance on abortion.
Oh, there are many exceptions. In fact, I'm pretty certain the vast majority of people are in between, and almost nobody believes either of those extremes. What people call "clumps of cells" are not fetuses but embryos.
And almost nobody really believes that unborn fetus have the same rights as living persons, because if they did, graveyards would be filled with gravestones of the many embryos and fetuses who died in miscarriages. Miscarriages are still incredibly common, and nobody names them or holds funerals for them. They're not officially recorded as people in any official register. Historically, legally, morally and biblically, personhood has always, always started at birth.
Of course that doesn't mean that people don't care about fetuses at all; obviously they do. Nobody has an abortion just for the heck of it. Even the most ardent pro-choice supporters do care about unborn life, and most do want to reduce the number of abortions. They just don't think the rights of unborn life trumps the rights of living people. They believe people, even women, should have the right to control their own bodies.
The simple fact of the matter is that some anti-abortion laws force women to risk their own lives, and sometimes even force them to die, even when there is no viable fetus anymore. Women have been denied life-saving medical care, have been denied the right to travel while pregnant, and women have died needlessly because of these laws.
And explaining these facts has not helped. The only reasonable conclusion is that the supporters of these laws just want women to suffer. And there is plenty of evidence outside the abortion issue that also supports that.
> it is striking that anglophone western countries (where the demonising of those who disagree is trongest) tend to either not allowing abortion at all, or having very late term limits (even up to birth)
Abortion of a healthy pregnancy during the third trimester is extremely rare. Nobody carries a healthy fetus for half a year and suddenly decides to get rid of it. This is a caricature that's often used to justify the kind of inhuman full abortion bans that kill women, but it's a situation that either doesn't happen or is extremely rare. The issue is that it should be possible to abort a pregnancy that's gone bad, and that women shouldn't go to prison for having a miscarriage. (Almost?) nowhere in Europe will a woman be forced to carry a dead fetus to term, but that has happened in the US.
> Given the current state of the world that sounds like they were right!
Not if there's nothing to sensibly spend it on. There's tons of waste and corruption in the US military, and yet that's the one part of government that seems to be completely exempt from Musk's chainsaw.
Saying an argument is false because some of the people putting it forward have bad motives is absolutely an ad-hominem.
Not when the argument is that they have bad motives. Then it's simply evidence supporting the argument.
I think the OP's point is that there are more "dark mirror ideologies" than the author claims, because the author was focused on examples that are too extreme (and therefore rare). The OP is showing that there are more reasonable oppositions that appear to fit the dark mirror definition and are not simply a false accusation.
Author here. I’ll grant “gray mirrors” without a fight. (Ideologies that admit to the same facts but one side just doesn’t care; multiply by zero instead of negative one).
Also note in the article I cop to at least one salient example being real
My main point is not to say dark/gray mirrors don’t exist, just that it should never be your first explanation. Your opponent tends to want things for their reasons, not yours, and the better you understand them the better you can oppose them. That’s it.
I'm pretty sure the reps also want immigrants just for their benefit.
Also often enough there are 'good immigrants' and 'bad immigrants'. JD Vance wife is an immigrant. Trumps wife too.
In Europe you see the same thing often enough too: "I'm not a nazi, i have a partner/friends which are from <another country>".
In my opionion the core difference is the idiology: Left people want to help and support and assume that immigrants are normal human beings which can be part of our country but of course don't want to have an immigrant killing people and raping and being shitty people. But their view point comes from the good side.
The right wing people hate immigrants as a default and come from the bad side. Which allows them also to have 'good' immigrants.
Nonetheless, i also think its an educational issue and value system issue: the left see it as a human right to be a human and having a fair chance, helping others and potentially also see that the world is not isolated. Like when the USA produces a lot of co2 which makes people across the world environment bad, they have some type of valid reason to move to the USA.
The right wing people don't care about this.
Why do you brand left as good and right as bad?
Listen to what the avg right wing person wants to do.
Traditional family values: Controlling how others should live their lives.
Limited Government: Something which benefits the rich and successful people only.
Individual responsiblity: Again benefits the rich and successful people. Plenty of poor people never got a chance (color, gender, money, ...)
Right is against increase of tax (every rep signs that statement), socialism is bad etc.
At this point why do you not?
Because I don't side with either left or right. Both did good things and bad things. Because I think there are useful left policies and useful right policies.
> useful right policies
Yeah like what?
OK, but consider that _my_ opponents are genuinely Dark Mirror ideologues. Silly of the author not to consider that.
I can’t say this is true, but it seems to me that Peter Theil views René Girard’s ideas on scapegoats and mimetic theory as correct, but views them not as an identification of the flaws we must outgrow as a species, but as a feature to be used to control and rule.
Well you can agree with the description and not the prescription. You can't derive an is from an ought after all.
I generally agree with the Buddhist description of reality but don't agree with their conclusions about what should be done about it.
HK, what do you mean when you say 'can't derive an is from an ought after all.'
I can read a meaning in that but I'm not sure if I'm understanding it the way you intend or not.
Descriptions cannot directly lead to prescriptions. Values come from you (the subject).
'Junk food is bad for your health' is a description, but who is it that decides that health is more important than pleasure? The prescription 'Don't eat junk food' is rooted in a value (e.g. that health is more important than pleasure), but you have the freedom to simply reject that value. How much moderation we should have is subjective.
So basically mirror in author's view presumes two groups with the same set of beliefs, they agree on the phenomena, they agree on validity of certain laws, they even agree on the ultimate outcome. They only differ on the nature of the outcome, one group thinking it's good, one group thinking it's bad.
For me, that's not actually a mirror. A mirror effect will change everything to 180 degrees, not just some parts.
A figure of speech is not a formula which must be literally interpreted. Sometimes doing so is interesting, but I don’t think this is one of those times.
A theological point:
> Even should you go to the ends of the earth and find some weird fringe sect that strictly professes perfect classical trinitarian doctrine, but also that God is bad actually
Satan (and atheists) seem to spend more time claiming that they are God; that their subjective truth trumps objective Truth.
What is the difference between subjective truth and objective truth? Do you have a telephone line to god or some other entity that will tell you Objective Truth?
There is no intellectually satisfying answer, in the form or a mathematical proof.
For if there were, then your liberty to reject that objective truth would stand diminished.
I can only tell you, for example, that "form follows function", not offer a proof that retires modern hedonism.
Its a simple question either you have a telephone line to Objective Truth or you don't. If you don't have a telephone line to Objective Truth, you are bsing and trying to pass off your Subjective Truth as Objective Truth. Otherwise all truths are the best approximations we get from Subjective Experience. On matters of this fundamental level, high level of rigor is even more important, if you fail to provide that then it should be completely dismissed. Such a fundamental basis of thought cannot be left to wishy washy nonsense.
You're at liberty to go the Full Bertrand Russell with the rejection of the "wishy washy" all you like; Objective Truth is always going to bring along a Kurt Gödel.
Whether or not you buy off on the notion that Objective Truth paid a visit a couple millenia back and was crucified for explaining that Truth to humanity remains a subjective matter.
It has to remain subjective, lest it tampered with your free will to reject that Objective Truth.
We all get to own our response to that Onjective Truth, free and clear.
One anticipates that this reply will stand rejected as "wishy washy" for having failed to externalize something that does not yield to externalization. All I can say is: best wishes to you, sir.
If a thing close to an objective truth exists, there is no reason that it would preclude freedom to reject it. Flat earthers won't exist otherwise.
The kind of thing you are falsely calling "objective truth", there have been thousands that have passed, and dozens still active that still claim to be also the same type of "objective truth". All of them contradict each other and are blatantly wrong even on really basic matters. It doesn't even try to be objective truth, any attempts to even make it so are treated by the response that one needs "Faith and Belief". Not just yours, all of them.
And even if we ignore the fact that these were sociopolitical movements primarily, even if we take that people were trying really in earnest to find truth, again its ridiculous and disproved by thousands of examples to believe men 2000 years ago could find the "final truth". Much better attempts at this goal, via the physical sciences, have been refined or disproven over the centuries, let alone what those men were doing.
Possibly you can take the negative approach and reject all of these inferior answers to arrive at something.
I've done what's possible in this medium to explain why you will always retain a quibble.
Let me now sign off and leave you the last word.
Your problem is that there are thousands of similar "truths" in the past and dozens currently active in the present. Which is true? None of them are able to show theirs is true and the others are wrong.
The problem with these groups is that they are taking a really hard problem and going the opposite direction of feasible ways to begin solving it. Mathematics and the physical sciences came the closest, after much pain and effort. And these groups have as yet only been able to contradict each other and each claim to be the ultimate truth.
I have another somewhat related observation. If you don't think or don't know how to think about your ideas your broadly (because the communication is saturated, or you lack any context), your opponents often get to dictate your beliefs. This is when you know either them or what their propaganda describes as the worst caricatural evil.
For a model example, you are a peasant in old Christian Europe, you don't know any learned humanism or anything like that, so you turn to witchcraft--as it is described by the preachers to you. Also it is common among young people who can be raised in a very controlled environment where the authority figures shut out any opposing views: so either you submit, or your only alternative is the (often objectively) horrible things they describe as the enemy. Of course they won't tell you there are other options besides that, and you are very unlikely to come up with them by yourself.
I would also say this plays a role in the society's spiral of internet radicalization. People rarely know basic boring political theory and ideologies, non-ragebait history post WW2 etc. If you are fully jacked into twitter-likes like that, your worldview is gonna largely consist of someone's Satans adopted out of ignorance and spite.
> Dark Liberals agree that democratic institutions, free speech, a free press, human rights, tolerance for differences, and a cultural melting pot are all essential parts of maintaining a free society
Honest question - is the "cultural melting pot" thing considered a liberal ideology in the USA, now? It was my impression that nowadays its considered an offensive bad thing, not "a strength of the USA".
Yes. I would be curious to hear what formed your impression that it is now considered an offensive bad thing. I have some ideas of course, but none are reflective of the reality of the worldviews of most city or even suburb-dwelling US people. If anything, the cultural melting pot thing has never been stronger.
> Yes. I would be curious to hear what formed your impression that it is now considered an offensive bad thing.
I don't know, TBH. I think friends from US told me to be careful, that it's now politically incorrect to mention it, especially to express support for it/imply that it's a good thing? I don't live there so I wouldn't know for sure, especially given that when I interact with US colleagues I generally try to steer away from more potentially "touchy" subjects. I did notice myself that it's best to avoid some subjects in the US corporate world, since you never know what may be offensive. Or well, I don't, perhaps it's a me-problem.
(it's probably also that I don't understand all the local implications and sensibilities. Like, for me "melting pot" means the ability to take immigrants from all over the world, and turn them into "americans" with roughly the same culture & set of values. That, for me is unequivocally a _good_ thing, I think it's generally recognized that conflict at values-level is the most difficult one to resolve/ it's basically unresolvable. You can't have a nation working together if large parts of it have different set of values, that's just a recipe for internal divisions and long-term problems. Or anyway, that's my general line of thinking, that's why I personally have always felt that the "melting pot" was one of the best things US did, and did better than e.g. France or other nations. But I do recognize that there might be other problems associated with that, in the minds of US citizens; and being subjected to the "melting pot" can't be easy/pleasant for everyone, it's in the end about modifying/tweaking your identity so that's gotta be a hard process)
Thanks for the reply. I think I mostly follow your elaboration.
Topics like DEI have definitely become a much more touchy subject in the last 2 years or so, and that they are not discussed as much in "official" channels as they previously were, but that the practices are mostly still there and are generally still considered a positive thing to most people.
It might just be semantics, but I do think your definition of melting pot is slightly off, in that in the US, there is no real consensus of what "the same culture & set of values' actually means. The US is still a very young country. The only "native" culture here was colonized and mostly erased by white settlers. The population of people here can largely be defined by different waves of historical immigration from other parts of the world. Culture and values here are more of two-way street, where they tend to be mixed and matched in the "melting pot" type environments that have popped up all over the country. Now with that being said, most recently we have found ourselves in a situation where an extremely vocal (and quite incoherent IMHO) minority of people against rising waves of multiculturalism have come into power and started controlling the narrative, but I would say that they are not representative of most US citizens, and that the only reason why this has happened is because 90 million people were too apathetic and mentally lazy to defend against it when given the opportunity. I'm still struggling to understand what that says about the US as a people, but I really don't think that as many of us are as wrapped up in identity politics as it might seem like we are from the outside.
> still a very young country
Oh come on. The amerindian/indigenous culture has (almost) _nothing_ to do with US culture, which is very much a thing. In fact, it's so much a thing that US almost had a "cultural victory". Part of the cold war victory was US cultural victory, because people all over the world aspired to the american dream. Hollywood movies are some of the most watched entertainment worldwide. English is the world's lingua franca because of the US, not UK (well, UK, but indirectly via US). All the american problems and internal conflicts will spill over to the world - or at least western world - sooner or later (it's unbelievable how much university environment in say, Germany is influenced by what is happening in the US universities; identity politics recently became a thing in Romania, when it seemed to be completely gone and irrelevant).
Don't kid yourself, USA absolutely has a very strong and well defined (and influential) culture. Not in that each citizen is the same, but that there are clear patterns, societal norms, generally-shared values etc. I'll take just one example: there are a lot of Indians in the US, AFAIK. They _largely_ don't have arranged marriages in US (definitely not 90% of the US citizens of Indian heritage!).
I think in some particularly race concious circles it can be seen as eliding the US's historical and modern problems with bigotry. I don't think it would genuinely provoke anyone but I wouldn't be surprised if someone took it as an opportunity to lecture.
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I don’t get the melting pot trope. America is basically identical everywhere. From education to healthcare, sports to entertainment, adverts to politicians.
You may wish to look up what "Fordism" is, the history behind it, and of course the many sociological critiques of t. That will likely give enough context to explain where that trope came from (and also why it's more of a thing in the US than anywhere else)
I think that's just the Overton window having shifted over time.
I believe the "cultural melting pot" used to be perceived as more politically neutral in the 1990s but it always came with a lot of asterisks. There's even that famous Superman poster about diversity from 1949[0] - despite the obvious incongruity with the Japanese internment camps and overall anti-Asian sentiments (although the Magnuson Act in 1943 had at least partially repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act by then because China became an ally to the US during WW2), racist sentiments towards Hispanic/Latin Americans and of course the ongoing racial segregation at the time.
I don't think we'll see "wokeness" be rolled back all the way to perceiving Irish immigrants as subhuman again, but most of these cultural points exist on a sliding scale rather than being fixed in time permanently.
Case in point, that infamous 1981 Atwater interview about the Southern Strategy[1], which was a Republican strategy built primarily on appealing to racist sentiments in the Southern US states.
We're not quite at the point where it's acceptable to explicitly target segments of the population by name so you'll instead hear politicians talk about "illegals" when talking about an overall reduction in immigration (including "legal" migration) and "criminals" when talking about the need for deportations (without trials or convictions) because to those who agree it is clear that these are shorthands the same way "welfare queens" and "urban crime" were shorthands in the Southern Strategy, whereas for those who disagree you can always fall back to the literal definition to defend your politics.
As an aside, I think this is one of two big problems with the article's appeal to theory of mind - the other being that most people don't have a coherent political framework and thus hold mutually contradictory political positions in different contexts: politicians and pundits can and do lie. While nearly every human assumes they are the good guy of their narrative and wants to do the right thing relative to their views of good and bad, sometimes that can include just blatantly lying. And sometimes people whose job it is to talk politics not only lie, they assume everyone else alongside of them is also lying, not presenting their own deeply held convictions.
I'm sure this isn't the case but sometimes it feels like debate culture plays into this because the way competitive debates are held removes any sense of actual conviction from the points being argued by focussing entirely on the technique, not truth value or ideological consistency or moral frameworks. You could personally oppose the death penalty but still find yourself having to argue for it if that's the position you're assigned - and sure, in theory this can help better understanding the other side but at the same time it feels like this arbitrariness and moral flexibility also rewards a level of detachment from the concrete issues that seems deeply troubling.
[0]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/superman-1950-poster-diver...
[1]: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
So Open Source is like a dark mirror version of Free Software. Open Source thinks that there's benefit in programs being free, but also that defending their freedom is actually a bad thing.
Open source self describes its value system as being freedom for developers, free software self describes its value system as being freedom for users.
Most open source grants users far more freedoms than proprietary software, for instance, though not maximal freedoms. It’s not opposed to user freedom (“that’s bad actually”) it’s just not the goal being optimized for.
I think it’s a fallacy to accuse them of being dark mirrors of each other for the reasons stated in the blog post. They have different worldviews and different goals, they don’t just take each other’s goals and multiply them by negative one.
Open source doesn’t try to intentionally restrict users, it just trades off against their maximal freedom in favor of maximal developer freedom.
Free software doesn’t intentionally try to encumber developers, it just trades off against their maximal freedom in favor of users maximal freedom.
When you grant people the freedom to take away freedom from others, it leads to less freedom in total.
This should be obvious.
Assume for the sake of argument that it is not obvious: can you clarify that statement?
I think it would be fair to describe GPL as a dark mirror of BSD, because GPL has an explicit viewpoint that some kinds of freedom are bad.
Open Source is a practical take on software. Free Software is an ideology.
What I like is practical and real life, what I don't like is ideological.
We can more limited variants of the dark mirror ideology though. For example, we can imagine someone who believes all the tenets of Marxian Communism and uses the analysis to maximize his own advantage, so that he if he is a large property owner ends up doing all the things that Marxists expect large property owners to do-- perhaps he even pushes a liberal ideology in public, but this kind of limited-dark-Marxism in private.
I think the dark liberalism of this essay is a real ideology commonly held by marginal dictators, think Lukashenko. I also don't think this kind of limited-dark-Marxism is unusual.
I feel like the author is discovering the facts vs opinions situation and its implications.
Would "accelerationists" would be dark mirror types?
Funny that the article mentions the minimum wage debate but forgets that its like the original example.
I find ideologies and ideologues off putting.
That's an interesting ideology you have there, ideologue.
Ideologies, in the usual sense, are just thinking systematically and critically about what you want and why.
Some people don't like to look to closely at that. This is understandable. I think it relates to what Popper called "the strain of civilization". Knowing that here are countless people out there who don't know you, don't care about you, and worst of all, don't care about the things that are most deeply meaningful to you.
Everyone who's not completely oblivious, feels that strain. And rejecting "ideologies" is one way to cope. One of the three basic ways.
"The greatest trick the devil ever played on mankind is to believe you can be free from ideology." Alternatively: "If you don't have an ideology, you just end up creating your own inconsistent ad hoc ideology from scratch."
I'm not sure who first started promoting the lie of being "free from ideology" or ideology being bad, although I could imagine it being tied directly to the rise of Third Way politics (e.g. New Labour in the UK) - which, ironically, very much is a political ideology (although one so incoherented and conflicted it has fallen victim to right-wing populism throughout the West). Actually the Democratic Party's politics (think Obama and Biden, not AOC and Sanders) generally closely align with Third Way politics.
I can understand opposition to ideologues as the term is usually applied when talking about people who only talk about their ideology rather than applying their ideology directly (e.g. I could at lengths explain the ideas behind Democratic Confederalism or Anarchism but that would do nothing to help with concrete policy decisions in the present system or day-to-day problems in real life). After all, when people say e.g. "Trump says it like it is" they don't mean he speaks the truth but that he talks about problems people perceive as directly affecting them and then talks about things he wants to do about them (whether or not they're helpful for addressing those problems is beside the point) - the distinction is that he offers a concrete solution at all rather than waffling on about the spirit of the light of the hope of the nation at the dawn of the greatness etc etc. Ironically this waffling is actually compensating for a lack of an explicit ideology but it is indeed quite off-putting.
Do you have an example of an ideology for which most people in the world agree it produced more good than harm?
Why should I trust an ideology? Why should I buy into a fixed set of doctrines? Supposedly, an ideology is not a religion, so faith shouldn't be an argument.
Adopting a fixed view of the world doesn't allow me to be pragmatic. It doesn't allow me to adapt in a dynamic and ever changing world.
And most of the times something isn't absolutely bad or good, but it depends on a set of factors. Immigration can be good in some circumstances and bad in other. Taxes can be good in some circumstances and bad in other.
I might value both ideas which can be on the left or the right side of the political spectrum.
Usually ideologies are promising some kind of Paradise on Earth and saving something. But the results are mostly loss of freedoms which is justified by the supposedly "greater good".
Also, ideologues and activists doesn't produce anything of value for society, they just are into convincing people into following their ways. While they are benefiting greatly from it.
>If you don't have an ideology, you just end up creating your own inconsistent ad hoc ideology from scratch.
I'm not sure that is accurate (when applied to individuals). If we define an ideology as a way of assigning moral value to things that is comprehensive enough so that almost any decision can be viewed through "the ideological lens", then some people are many orders of magnitude less influenced by ideologies than other people are.
What is futile is to ignore or prevent the effects of ideologies on a society or a large organization because people who share an ideology cooperate much more effectively than people who do not, and this has powerful effects on politics and the management of organizations.
>people who share an ideology cooperate much more effectively than people who do not
While that might be true it doesn't follow that the effect of their cooperation is a net positive.
I emphatically agree.
There are many ways to define opposites. This author demands that the "dark mirror" person wants the exact opposite, but that is way too specific in my opinion.
Then it's more interesting with cases like William Cowper. Who certainly believed in anything a Christian in his time and place was supposed to believe, including double predestination. It's just that unlike most who believed that, he was convinced he was predestined for hell. He didn't go around doing evil things, of course, what would be the point of that? But he was very, very distressed.
Likewise, I think the author underestimates how much Marxist historical materialism was viewed as a hard science in much of the world, until the cold war. There were certainly capitalists who were terrified it was true, but could not see any way out of it for themselves, because just like Cowper's double predestination, orthodox Marxism denies that there is such a thing.
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> fully commit to wickedness, inverting all the foundational moral goals
Mm, reminds me modern russian orthodoxy.
No need for racism...
What racism? I'm not talking about a race by any chance, I'm talking about an ideology of a particular effectively for-profit organization.