This is just “both sides are equally wrong/bad.”
Idk about equally, but often enough, both sides are indeed wrong.
“Enlightened centrists”. I make fun of you people constantly.
Nothing wrong with accepting that both sides of anything have good and bad shit going on. I couldn’t imagine just blindly following one side 100% even when they can also do questionable stuff.
Sure, but the problem is that rather than arguing the finer points of how to combat climate change, for example, we have to argue about whether truth is truth.
There are leftists that get things wrong
Yes, because you’re so blinded by your indoctrination that you can’t accept the flaws of “your” side.
“Climate change exists”
“Religion shouldn’t allow governments to prevent basic healthcare needs”
“January 6 was a failed insurrection”
These are the things that the right calls indoctrination.
And the hard left calls not important enough to bother voting.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here
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Maybe I’m too naive, but I didn’t think they were referring to just politics. They were just referring to two people arguing.
You know, I think you’re right. I’m so used to the phrase “both sides” meaning a specific thing it didn’t register as anything else. If it had been phrased “both sides of an argument” I would have understood.
Does it normally refer to politics? Maybe for Americans, and they are responsible for a good deal of the English language content online. Right, and the 2 party system…
I’m with you, though, both sides means both sides of an argument. I think the news had something on that a while back- for every climate scientist they interviewed, they had to also interview a climate denier to present a “fair and balanced” view XD
Why are y’all in the comments trying to act like one or another universalist position has to fit like a sock to all situations? There are debates where one side is blatantly wrong and the other is blatantly correct, debates where one side is wrong and the other has some points right, debates where both sides have some points right, debates where both sides would do well to return to school and debates where no side can be objetively correct because they’re discussing something intrinsically subjective. The “enlightened centrist” meme is useful to mock the stupid position that “the truth is always in the middle”, but if you think you’re always going to find someone in any debate who has the right answer, you’re going to find yourself siding with stupid shit all the time.
Yes! Can we pin this somewhere for new Lemmy users to read? I’m so over the right/wrong ONLY attitudes
It would be better if we taught people to be critical thinkers
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Learn about one religion and you may become faithful. Learn about many and you may become an atheist.
There’s some truth and some idiocy behind this meme. Just because, for example, the US political system tends toward a two party system, does not mean you can always or always not find some amount of truth or good ideas based on what two parties tell you. In fact, the framing is irrelevant toward truth, and is even it’s own type of bias. There are certainly some third rails neither side of a debate will touch, or some things both find the need to lie about. But in some cases someone is sort of right about something and sometimes people are just wrong.
Except the right’s platform no longer has any aspect of it that’s correct. They abandoned the conservative platform ages ago and went full fascist.
Be careful careful about arguing that on lemmy.world. I argued for a bit with a “both sides are bad”, eventually called them out for being a Putin puppet, and got my post deleted by a Lemmy.world mod.
To say nothing of what the Republicans are up to.
Not me. I learned about all of them and have accepted them all. It’s exhausting.
When Orion aligns with cup noodle. Ramen, my brother. May Prince Phillip have mercy on your Chūnjié and bless your virgins in Ragnarok.
Or a syncretist.
Or an independent researcher.
Because there’s supposedly more to this than old secondhand stories.
both sides
wtf did u just say to me u lil bishh
Can’t you just live normally in a filter bubble like the rest of us?
bOtH siDeS
Both sides can be misinformed but, it doesn’t mean you need to react negatively to someone else’s viewpoint. If you disagree there’s nothing wrong with saying “I disagree because I think that…” or “I’ve read that…” and you don’t have to call the other person a nasty derogatory name.
You‘re new here, right? Keep that positive attitude as long as you can.
Actually I wrote that because I am not new to this stuff at all. Just kind of fed up with always getting called names just because sometimes I post things that arent the most popular view or are different ways of looking at things. I’m OK with people saying “I don’t agree” if they can explain why without also adding “you idiot” or “you fucking idiot” onto the end. I try to be civil, but am always surprised how people respond with uncalled for name calling.
You’re right. There is zero benefit to being an asshole, especially for the person being an asshole. Ego makes it tempting though.
I can see where it’s not just tempting but seems necessary sometimes, but all you’re gonna do is bait the person into a useless bout of name calling back and forth.
99% of us just think whatever our friends think. Is that an argument for or against what we’re thinking?
We automatically choose our friends based on similar taste, opinions and humour so it’s not surprising that these things match up.
Thanks for your analysis doctor. But what about the question?
Well I think you’re right, but I hope people have more brains to than to simply go along with what their friends think. I’m very anti-religious, but have close friends who are deeply religious. We just stay off the topic. I think people choose to hang with others who think the way they do most of the time. That doesn’t prove anybody right, it just proves we like to congregate with those whose opinions are the same as ours.
I think it might speak against the idea. Because there is a strong probability that it is chosen, not because evidence/logic/etc leads to it, but because it is popular with one’s friends. Not saying it’s necessarily so, but there’s a strong probability.
(Which would lead to “truth can only be gotten from antisocial weirdos”. Which is kinda bleak I guess.)
But yes. I think that the 99% of people get their whole reality from consensus. No actual independent thinking except in the details. And there is also a vast hostility to the strange there. Maybe that’s “tribalism”.
That’s true where I live in mormon country, USA. People are told what to think by the church, and they also are instructed who to vote for by the church. The Mormons often say, " my church does my thinking for me." I guess it relieves people of the responsibility of having to make choices for themselves. That to me is much bleaker than truth being obtained from weirdos.
Which I think it correct. It takes a “weirdo” to be either crazy or brave enough to say anything that goes against the popular viewpoint. Most people can handle almost anything better than they can handle being unpopular or called weird.
It’s funny. People I know who are religious. They may have a head full of scripture but dogmatism isn’t as ubiquitous as you might think. And often behind that scriptural thinking is a proper humility. An understanding that these eyes and this brain are just a speck. A dot of illumination in a vast night. Fine modern scientific and/or theological theories notwithstanding.
The popular arrogance, otoh, is childish. Smug certainty that you have truth in hand. I find that hard to swallow.
Drugs and meditation are the best cure for it as far as I can tell.
I like meditation a lot.
Another term for what you are describing which is philosophically untenable is relativism or if you are too far gone possible solipsism.
I described like 5 things. Can you be more specific?
Fair enough, apologies for the vagueness.
I was referring to the first two sentences of your third paragraph. Relativism would look like a kind of correspondence theory of truth which is dependent on where you are geographically and who you interact with socially. Rather than something being true because it corresponds or appears (or is convenient I suppose) to be true as it relates to material phenomena; what is taken as or considered to be true is wholly dependent on what a group one is part of might think. This is relativism as it is 1. not contingent on the natural world, as in the empirical world, so basically stuff we get when we interact with our senses. It’s a bit problematic because one can believe whatever one wishes, this is clearly not a material outlook and can be presumed to bring erroneous thinking or erroneous conclusions somewhere along the line. Any kinds of fantastical thinking can enter the picture, it’s not problematic in itself, but you’ll see most philosophers shy away from it because there are all sorts of problems that come up. Part of the problem people have with postmodernist philosophy is related to this, I’ll leave the explanation out for now, though I recognize it is a lofty claim.
For 2. solipsism is more or less believing that you are the authority, you can’t be certain others really exist or are equivalent in their capacity as a conscious being as you are. People tend to say, “I can only really know that I exist” and point at Descartes and his maxim Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am which I think is a weird perversion. At any rate, if one takes what one feels or believes or wants to be true, to be true, and solely holds their conception as the only one which matters insofar as it lines up with what they believe, there are similar erroneous conclusions which can arise.
The link then between 1. and 2. is everything in the world is interpreted in a highly perspectival way in a way which must relate to you. One places themselves at the centre of the universe, thinks their thoughts are actually the way the world works as opposed to convenient heuristics or works-in-progress. An intrasocial network of information, i.e. one’s friends or group, can be the basis for such relativistic thinking, to the exclusion of others which is sorta where you see the tribalism part as well.
Hope some of that made sense, let me know if it didn’t I’m a bit drowsy from my night medicine, I tried my best to be coherent. Maybe other comrades can chime in and correct me wherever I may have said something wrong or unclear.
Why limit yourself to two?
Yup my current favorite combo is hexbear and the neolibs at /r/Destiny. Completely ideologically opposed on nearly all issues. I usually side more with the hexbear crowd but they also have their own bubble thing going on
Fires up the grill
