A THREAD

This gets at something I've been thinking about a lot, regarding moral agency & culpability. When people on the right do some horrible thing, it's often said that it was out of mistaken belief, not malice. For example, in their minds they weren't involved in a coup ...
... they were defending democracy in the face of massive fraud & a stolen election. They were wrong about that, but they sincerely believed it. And "defending democracy against fraud" is, morally speaking, a *good* thing. It's what you'd want people do (if there were fraud)!
Now, obviously if they break laws you can hold them *legally* accountable, but the more interesting question is about *moral* accountability. Are you doing something wrong - for which you should be held morally accountable - if you sincerely believe you're doing something right?
This isn't easy to answer. Again, if democracy were in fact being stolen via massive fraud, protest -- even violent protest -- would be the *right thing to do*. So from within the worldview & fact pattern of those involved, they were doing the right thing.
But it's also unsatisfying to simply say that their errors of belief are exculpatory. After all, most of the people who have done bad things throughout history believed they were doing the right thing. Conscious, deliberate evil is the exception; deluded evil is the norm.
So here's the interesting question: do these people (or people in general) have a *moral obligation to form true beliefs*? In other words, can they be held accountable for being led into error? Can we say, morally, "they should have known better"?
This gets really tricky. On one hand, you're born into a culture, a set of groups & tribes, & it is human nature to believe what your tribes believe, to trust the information sources that your tribes trust. It wasn't your "fault" you were born there; you didn't choose it.
But on the other hand, there are demonstrable things one can do to guard oneself against systematic error. You subject yourself to self-examination or critique by others; you take in info from a wide array of sources; you remain conscious of & resistant to motivated reasoning.
What we can say about today's RWers is, they seem to be participating, eagerly, in their own deception. They do less & less self-examination; they stay inside their epistemic bubble; they consciously exclude or discredit skeptical voices; they *wallow* in self-flattering error.
So it feels like we ought to be able to say, "sure, they were deceived, operating on bad information, but they are at least partially responsible for that. They did nothing to resist it. They were epistemically lazy, on purpose, because they *want* to believe these fantasies."
But that's sticky territory. If we view epistemic best practices as a moral matter, who among us is innocent? We're all in error about something; none of us try as hard as we might, or are as careful as we might be, about what we believe. Where's the line of accountability?
These are extremely urgent questions, since we're moving into a place where fully half the country is trapped in conspiratorial fantasies. They will act on those fantasies. Society will have to figure out how, and to what extent, to hold them morally responsible. </fin>
Ah, this thread is *extremely* relevant to the discussion.

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More from @drvolts

10 Jan
In case the symbolism was too subtle for you so far, here's a story of black Capitol police officers, outmanned & unsupported, fighting off domestic terrorists long enough for lawmakers -- including some of the ones who'd stoked the terrorism -- to escape. buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanu…
These are not "protesters." Image
They don't support the police. They support themselves. Their blue-stripe flag bullshit is just another symbol for white supremacy. Image
Read 4 tweets
10 Jan
Yeah I'm gonna say I'm not ready to heal until these motherfuckers are in jail. washingtonpost.com/politics/insid… Image
It was only an escalation from what they had done before. They'll do it again, and escalate further. Image
We were about 5 minutes and a few random twists of circumstance away from this happening.
Read 4 tweets
9 Jan
All right I need to not spend my Saturday being Mad Online, but I have a couple of short threads to get off my chest. One is about this rhetoric -- ubiquitous on Fox right now -- that Trump voters just want to be "heard."
I don't have the stomach to look up the clips, but just check out basically any Hannity segment from the last few days. This rhetoric is used on the right frequently. It was used about the armed rioters who invaded the Michigan state capitol. It was used in Oregon ...
... when lawmakers fled the state rather than allowing a climate bill to pass, and then armed militia mobs descended on the capitol & intimidated lawmakers into ending the legislative session.
Read 10 tweets
6 Jan
A harsh truth lots of people are whistling past: keeping the filibuster in place, as Manchin demands, means no big legislation. Period. There is no major Dem legislation in the world, in the universe, in conceptual space, for which 10 GOP senators would cross the aisle. NONE.
If the filibuster stays, Dems will be confined to what they can squeeze through budget reconciliation. No democracy reform, no climate bill, no health care bill. And voters will end up blaming Biden for gridlock. It sucks, but if you don't like it, talk to Manchin.
The only question mark here is how committed Manchin is to keeping the filibuster. There's *some* possibility that he, like some other D senators, is just giving Rs a chance. If they filibuster more Covid aid or democracy reform, perhaps Manchin will say, "ah, we have no choice."
Read 7 tweets
6 Jan
Nuke the filibuster and pass comprehensive democracy reform legislation before the end of January cowards.
Make DC a state before the end of February cowards.
Pass a national clean electricity standard to decarbonize the electricity grid by 2035 before the end of March cowards.
Read 6 tweets
5 Jan
There's enough global warming "baked into the system" to push global average temperatures past the global 2° target. That's a failure of sorts. But every increment of warming is still worth fighting. apnews.com/article/climat…
Turns out (shockingly) the findings & implications of this paper are much more complicated & nuanced than conveyed in the AP story. Check out Zeke's thread for the gory details:
I feel bad for climate change reporters, because it moves slowly, and the science moves slowly, and while you can spin this or that paper in a "startling finding," generally what science finds is that we're f'd in the same tedious way we were f'd yesterday & the day before.
Read 4 tweets

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