Thread by @LibertarianBlue

I promised a thread on "centrists" vs "partisans" earlier. Here it is!

It's easy to believe that centrists, by virtue of their own self-declared beliefs, are less biased than partisans. They're not. They're just prone to a different type of bias.

It may even be a WORSE bias!

Why worse? Because a partisan's biases are easy to detect, whereas a centrist's are not.

If a conservative labels something socialist, put your critical thinking skills on alert. Likewise if a leftist labels something racist.

When do you put your guard up with a centrist?

How do I know centrists have their own set of biases? Because condemning tribalism and bubbles doesn't mean you can escape it. Centrists follow other centrists, read other centrists, watch other centrists. Crucially, they TRUST other centrists - which is where bias comes in.

If a leftist encounters another leftist, he won't exercise his critical faculties when listening to his claims. Ditto for rightists.

And ditto for centrists! You don't get to dodge human psychology just by refusing to self-ID as a partisan. Bias doesn't work that way, my dudes.

If they've been criticizing one side too long, they'll feel a need to switch to the other one for a while, or their sense of identity will become insecure. And because "centrist" is a socially approved label while "partisan" is not, it's a label you often want to keep.

They may also face peer pressure: "you're not a real centrist, you only criticize one side!" It happens to @RubinReport all the time. It's the centrist version of RINO and DINO. Exactly the same dynamic, and not even slightly more rational.

So centrists have a knee-jerk reaction to partisans, just as leftists have a knee-jerk reaction to rightists and vice versa.

Like any biases, this sometimes leads to truth. There are excellent "F both sides" guys who are right more often than not, eg @notwokieleaks & @neontaster

The partisan bias can also lead to truth - especially when one side is trying to cover it up (Democrats have repeatedly called social media censorship a "conspiracy theory." Google's own briefing contradicts them.)

So what's better to identify as? Partisan or centrist?

I think partisan. The label has a much worse reputation than centrist. People are much more likely to say "I don't trust a partisan source!"

Paradoxically, that's a good thing! If you want to keep your empirical skills sharp, you want MORE scrutiny and MORE distrust, not less.

"Centrist," like "expert" and "intellectual," falls into the trap of being too trusted. If you can rely on your label as a cushion, your empirical skills don't need to be as sharp. They could be very good! But the question is whether the label helps or not. I think not.

Worse, if you spend a lot of time critiquing partisans and tribalism and bias, you can easily fall into the trap of thinking you're less prone to error than they are. You aren't. And if you start thinking you are, you'll be MORE prone to error because your guard will be down.

^ This can be summarized as the "smug intellectual" problem.

If you're a smart partisan (and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of dumb partisans), you'll be aware of your own blind spots and can take steps to correct them. Even better, you'll probably know exactly where they are!

Much harder for self-identifying centrists to do.

Ultimately, you don't need either label, and if you really want to mitigate tribal / ingroup psychology (you can never fully escape it) it's better to have none. But if you have to pick one ... pick partisan!