Oddbean new post about login | logout Thank you for the great summaries.
I like debating. So hard to find people who debate civilly, but rigorously, and still want to be frens, afterward.
I told a demoncrat their policy was a slippery slope, and she said that was the slippery slope fallacy. Basically, "Just because you say it's a slippery slope doesn't mean it is." It should instead be called the "nuh-uhh" fallacy, or the "let me slide down this slope, damnit" fallacy. This is what they're teaching kids in debate class now-days.
To be fair, it's bad form to name fallacies in arguments. Unless they're funny ones like argumentum ad Hitlerum.
You should read On Doing the Right Thing, a collection of essays by Albert Jay Nock. In one essay he talks about this sort of thing. He opines that a soceity is immature if it can't have conversations. Archive: https://archive.org/details/OnDoingTheRightThing Mises: https://mises.org/library/book/doing-right-thing https://mises.org/mises-daily/decline-conversation
Communication is breaking down.
Personally I think this is because of too much individualism. However, I'm no expert on such things. I just feel this intuitively. I also have no perscriptions on how to change it. It's just the way things are now.
What you call individualism is the result of collectivism. Collectivist-altruist philosophy and tribalism is what leads to people who can't think or properly defend their positions. A lack of individualism is the problem. An individual necessarily must think and use reason in this world. A collectivist follows a tribe and uses violence or fallacies because he has nothing else to offer.
Most people cannot think. They outsource their thinking all the time to their percieved betters. It's been this way since the dawn of human civilization. Plus, humans are tribal by nature. We're social creatures who are part of communities. Maybe that's family or your town or whatever. I can get behind the idea that as individuals we must invest ourselves completely in our communities, though.
