#rationalization magnets

[mentalisttraceur]

Re Appropration Discourse and Its Consequences: I get the feeling that BIPOC intellectuals just wanted a way to tell white people that everything they want is wrong and that they are wrong for wanting it. It’s political BDSM, and a lot of Marxist and Marxist-influenced ideas are very useful for political BDSM.

Cultural appropriation as political BDSM created by BIPOC people is certainly a take. I don't agree.

For starters, it's only BDSM if everyone involved consents.

Jokes aside, I understand how a lot of rhetoric out there can give this impression. But I think that's because "cultural appropriation" nuance decays readily into a rationalization magnet for having an issue with a huge variety of things. Anything that empowers people to say "this thing you like or do is bad (and you should feel bad) (and you should stop)" in a socially acceptable and reflexively supported way is going to catch on with people who are interested in making others feel bad or making others stop doing what they're doing.

So then the question becomes: is there any other useful idea that the term "cultural appropriation" could have been intended to cover? Because if there is, then that's much more likely to have been the origin. And I still stand by my "Cultural Appropriation 2" post from a few years ago where I describe one such idea. A good way to discover that idea, or maybe other useful ideas that might fit the term, is to treat the words as composable: throw away the term "cultural appropriation", start with just the dictionary definition of "appropriation", and then try idea-fitting possible ways to apply "cultural" to that meaning - if there's a combination of those concepts that seems like it is actually useful, then I tend to assume that's what someone meant when they came up with putting the words together like that. Because I have to assume someone somewhen was able to do at least as well as I can at seeing useful concepts and the right words to express them.

And so the other related thing is that even if by some chance "cultural appropriation" really was coined for the purposes of political BDSM, I don't care. That's a bad use for the term and I am going to appropriate the shit out of bad uses of terms when I can clearly see a useful meaning for that term to have.

[mentalisttraceur]

Categorizing ideological traits as inherently left-wing or right-wing is a little dangerous because in practice the political left and right are unstable, shifting labels.

We can come up with timeless definitions of the left or the right in terms of cognition or ideology, and in many ways this can be useful for analysis. But the actual on-the-ground process by which people identify as (or are labeled as) "left" or "right" is going to be more tribal and freed from adhering to the strict definition.

And so the danger is that if we teach people something like "[ideology label] is inherently a [left/right]-wing ideology", what we put out is both a cognetic opening and a rationalization magnet along the lines of "I can't be [ideology label], because I am (identifying as the side/tribe labeled as) [left/right]".

We could prevent this by just as consistently and successfully reinforcing our timeless definitions of the political left and the right, and teaching people to spot the deviations between those definitions and what in practice is associated with the "left" or "right" by the culture at large, and raising people to prioritize changing their political labels to match some official definitions rather than how people around them are using the definitions in practice. But that requires a lot more people to engage in persistent pedantry that we can see too many people find neurotic and ignore. And frankly, the nuance decay properties are not in our favor: "[bad thing] is inherently an [other side] ideology" is more spreadable, appealing, and accessible to a much wider audience than "[your/other side] label actually refers [precise definition]", and there's a lot more social reward for the former than for any of this nuancing.

This is true for all political labels of course, but at least some labels (for example "liberal" and "conservative") have useful composable apolitical meanings, and gain their political meaning from combining that apolitical meaning with political context. This helps anchor and stabilize their political meanings across time, so long as people learn and appreciate the apolitical meaning, and the usefulness of composable language.

This is why for labels like "liberal" and "conservative" I fight for the fixed timeless apolitical meaning (from which a fixed timeless political meaning follows), and for labels like "left" and "right" I fight for meanings that amount to "whatever that side over there is currently like". Because we need both kinds of labels, and "left" and "right" are perfectly suited for the latter role - they are arbitrary and their base apolitical meanings do not logically imply anything when applied to the political context.

[mentalisttraceur]

I don't have the strength to muster a proper exploration of this idea right now, but the anti forgiveness sentiments that got popular in the last four years or so are toxic and harmful.

But I mean, you know the usual culprits by now: cognetic openings, nuance decay, cognetic openings, ideology stretchiness, cognetic openings, rationalization magnets, bad idea-fitting... did I miss anything? Oh yes of course: cognetic openings and a badly ignorant idea-fitting of what forgiveness even is or means.

The ideas that forgiveness is not owed, is not necessary, or is even sometimes detrimental... those ideas are also saying something good, healthy, and useful. But you can say those good, healthy, and useful parts in other ways, on top of an actually useful and healthy definition of forgiveness, without all the downsides.

[mentalisttraceur]

One of the biggest problems that has come out of the mainstreaming of the term "gaslighting" is that it serves as a rationalization magnet for every person who thinks their shitty or toxic behaviors are justified by their past experiences or how they felt.

Because most people who do shitty or toxic things do them because they feel genuinely justified and even righteous in doing so. They're just usually wrong in some cognition along the way.

Maybe their assessment of the situation or the person or behavior they are reacting to is skewed, and their emotional reactions are justified for that interpretation, but not for a more correct interpretation.

But if your mind learned to reliably correctly deal with frequent unhealthy or abusive circumstances in your past, then it may very well be natural to interpret any attempt to point out mistakes like that in your cognition as gaslighting attempts.

This also goes for people who are overconfident in their rightness and righteousness, and from some other vantage points where gaslighting just seems more obviously right or more emotionally convenient than critical self-review.

[mentalisttraceur]

Maybe my problems with the left can be summarized as "they keep providing new rationalization magnets for human shittiness" and my problems with the right can be summarized as "they keep defending old rationalization magnets for human shittiness".

Where by "left" I really mean "liberal" in the original and actually useful meaning of "generally in favor of change" and by "right" I really mean "conservative" in the original and actually useful meaning of "generally resistant to change".

[mentalisttraceur]

Rationalization Magnets

Some things make it psychologically easier, more natural, for the mind to rationalize a wrong conclusion than to actually think all the way through to the right conclusion.

I call these rationalization magnets because they pull the mind into rationalization.

Rationalization magnets do not have to be intentional. If something sways a person into rationalization they find convincing, they are likely to sincerely express it, thinking it's just good reasoning or evidence.

Rationalization magnets are often a key reason for why something that otherwise is a good idea can have unethical effects if expressed a specific way.

Rationalization magnets can be a primary cause for good people doing what looks like willfully bad things, and must be considered as part of good idea-fitting.

Rationalization magnets can be thought of as exploiting some specific cognetic openings, and becoming more resistant to them is a matter of training specific cognition.