“the Blank Slate doctrine that all individuals must have exactly equal abilities, preferences, & values, and any empirical evidence challenging this doctrine must be instantly slandered)”
But when I look up Blank Slate doctrine on Google—I find nothing remotely related to this claim. Instead I see a lot of something like this:
“According to blank slate theory, the mind is completely blank at birth. From there, education, environment, and experiences – which are external, as well as material and/or immaterial – shape the child’s process of development.”
Also it’s not clear to me what you mean by “far-left”—do you have more specific labels in mind? I consider myself fairly left-wing but have never heard of this doctrine, and highly doubt that my even more lefty friends would endorse anything like your claim above.
Examples include every ‘idealistic’ communist regime that degenerated into a totalitarian nightmare, internal genocide, & surveillance state.
In this, you’re only considering far-left regimes that are highly state-controlled, rather than both libertarian and left-wing societies (e.g. anarchistic). If you look for these examples, you might actually find things are going pretty well internally (e.g. Zapatistas or Rojava) and that these societies don’t seek to eradicate sub-groups of a population—which is pretty uniform for far-right ideologies.
trying to tally up the relative historical harms that allegedly resulted, usually second- or third-hand, from holding certain views [emphasis mine].
Can you clarify what you mean here? I’m trying to be charitable but seems like you’re trying to cast doubt on the fact that far-right ideologies have caused harm to people, or diminish the harm that has been caused. Would appreciate you specifying exactly what you meant as this could easily be interpreted as this pretty reprehensible view.
James—you’re giving a very uncharitable interpretation that sounds politically motivated.
I explicitly said that it’s ‘often true’ that ‘far-right ideas have created enormous suffering’. In what sense was that ‘trying to cast doubt’ or ‘diminish the harm’?
Then I argued that far-left ideas have also created enormous suffering.
We can dispute what % of far-left nations become highly state-controlled such that they have the centralized capacity for totalitarian oppression. My estimate might be considerably higher than your estimate. I don’t see many examples of truly libertarian or anarchistic societies that last more than 10 years, or that involve more than 10 million people. But such disputes would get us into precisely the kinds of pointless partisan squabbling that EA tries (rightly) to avoid.
If you’d like to learn more about the Blank Slate doctrine, and its many harmful effects over the last couple of centuries, I’d highly recommend the classic Steven Pinker book The Blank Slate (2001).
Could you clarify your last paragraph I quoted then? Im genuinely unsure why you used the word “allegedly”, if you do believe the far-right ideas have causes large amounts of harm?
I also wasn’t clear on what you meant by second or third-hand in this context, so clarifying that would also help me understand your position better.
James—I don’t get the sense that you’re arguing in good faith, but are looking for ‘gotcha’ quotes that you can share out of context. Sorry, I’m not interested in playing that game.
I’m confused by this—you say:
But when I look up Blank Slate doctrine on Google—I find nothing remotely related to this claim. Instead I see a lot of something like this:
Also it’s not clear to me what you mean by “far-left”—do you have more specific labels in mind? I consider myself fairly left-wing but have never heard of this doctrine, and highly doubt that my even more lefty friends would endorse anything like your claim above.
In this, you’re only considering far-left regimes that are highly state-controlled, rather than both libertarian and left-wing societies (e.g. anarchistic). If you look for these examples, you might actually find things are going pretty well internally (e.g. Zapatistas or Rojava) and that these societies don’t seek to eradicate sub-groups of a population—which is pretty uniform for far-right ideologies.
Can you clarify what you mean here? I’m trying to be charitable but seems like you’re trying to cast doubt on the fact that far-right ideologies have caused harm to people, or diminish the harm that has been caused. Would appreciate you specifying exactly what you meant as this could easily be interpreted as this pretty reprehensible view.
James—you’re giving a very uncharitable interpretation that sounds politically motivated.
I explicitly said that it’s ‘often true’ that ‘far-right ideas have created enormous suffering’. In what sense was that ‘trying to cast doubt’ or ‘diminish the harm’?
Then I argued that far-left ideas have also created enormous suffering.
We can dispute what % of far-left nations become highly state-controlled such that they have the centralized capacity for totalitarian oppression. My estimate might be considerably higher than your estimate. I don’t see many examples of truly libertarian or anarchistic societies that last more than 10 years, or that involve more than 10 million people. But such disputes would get us into precisely the kinds of pointless partisan squabbling that EA tries (rightly) to avoid.
If you’d like to learn more about the Blank Slate doctrine, and its many harmful effects over the last couple of centuries, I’d highly recommend the classic Steven Pinker book The Blank Slate (2001).
Could you clarify your last paragraph I quoted then? Im genuinely unsure why you used the word “allegedly”, if you do believe the far-right ideas have causes large amounts of harm?
I also wasn’t clear on what you meant by second or third-hand in this context, so clarifying that would also help me understand your position better.
James—I don’t get the sense that you’re arguing in good faith, but are looking for ‘gotcha’ quotes that you can share out of context. Sorry, I’m not interested in playing that game.