Thread by @Evolving_Ego

Biased Thinking (1/2)

If you like a theory, you ask: "Can I believe this, given the evidence?"

If you don't like a theory, you ask: "Must I believe this, given the evidence?"

Biased Thinking (2/2)

If it's your out-group, you ask: "Can I stigmatize the whole group based on a few bad apples."

If it's your in-group, you ask: "Must the whole group be stigmatized because of these few bad apples?"

(3/2) This leads the accused in-group to call for a higher-rez analysis of the in-group ("more nuance, please!"), while the accusing out-group moves toward a lower-rez analysis ("There's no essential difference! It's all *vaguely* systemically connected!").

(4/2) When the woke are calling out a few nuts on the right, they sometimes imply that everyone who isn't woke shares the blame because they are all part of the same system of colonial patriarchy.

(5/2) And the IDW is like "no, we denounce white supremacists and have a wide range of complex views about how to do social justice well."

(6/2) When the IDW calls out a few nuts among the woke, they sometimes imply that all social justice activists, or all progressives, or sometimes even the whole left is to blame, because they've surrendered to pomo neo-marxist thinking. (Followers do this more than leaders).

(7/2) And people on the left are like, "How can you say that? Marxists don't even like postmodernists, and the woke are a small minority on the left."

(8/2) And when both sides are viewing both sides at different levels of resolution, it's difficult to see how to find common ground, reconcile some differences, and get clarity about the remaining differences.

(9/2) Homework: apply this analysis to the pro-police/anti-police controversy in the US.