>Sorry for the delayed response! I appreciate your reply. I think our general point of divergence is that, while I also roll my eyes at lots of the noise coming out of the left-wing community these days, that nonetheless doesn't have the slightest sway on my ideals.

On the bright side, https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-issues-twitte...

NYtimes did some soul searching recently and discovered twitter was the sourcing their people being in echo chambers. Which does technically derive from conservative censorship.

CNN's new ceo also publicly quit twitter and is encouraging their journalists to do the same.

> It wouldn't matter if everyone on the right wing were angels and everyone on the left wing were Alec Baldwin - my political philosophy isn't a function of how much I personally like other people who also hold X or Y beliefs.

Take the Canadian freedom protest. The media smeared them as nazi confederates looking to overthrow the government. It was absurd, but the majority of canadians believed this coverage. Polls show the majority of canadians dont support. I dont frankly care.

>There are certainly people doing this - I would say a majority of people IME - on both sides.

Oh for sure. Joe rogan literally called steven crowder an ideologue to his face. He's not wrong.

>I'm a Rawlsian pluralist and I believe in giving everyone the maximum liberty consistent with the same for others (e.g. no right to enslave because others have a right not to be enslaved), but it's indisputable that there are certain issues where there is no "don't impose your views on others" option.

Wow must be decades since i last heard of rawls. I find rawls has influenced republicans quite significantly. Here in Canada you'd be peoples party.

>For instance, abortion. If I believe foetus are human beings (or. rather, persons), then the "don't impose your views on others" option would entail not murdering those human beings, as I would hypothetically see it. If I believe foetus are not persons, then the "don't impose your views on others" option is not to forbid women to control their reproductive cycles. Etc etc. The Millian/Rawlsian view falls apart when you start considering fundamental disagreements about the definitions of liberty and of human beings themselves.

Abortion is one hell of a subject. Here in Canada it's a political no-go, if the Cons say they'll bring up the abortion subject... guaranteed they lose the election. Meanwhile in the USA, it's a primary subject and this argument is totally what republicans argue often.

I personally don't hold any of these opinions. I actually don't know what I would do on the abortion subject if I were absolute monarch.

>This seems to be a mainstay of your comments: echo chambers and tendentious reporting are "evil" for one side, but par for the course for the other (incidentally, your own) side. I would consider them par for the course for both sides. It doesn't surprise me and (for the reasons stated above inter alia) doesn't influence my political philosophy.

It's a bit more complicated.

Where we are headed? progressives have twitter and the cons go to parler/gab/whatever. They are for sure in echo chambers. For Canada for example, omegacanada.win is a massive worthless echo chamber for conservatives. You'll also notice it's basically a ghost town. If it wasn't a ghost town, it would inevitably become terrible like twitter.

What do we get? The political sides stop talking to each other. Polarization is basically maximized. It would inevitable to produce a civil war. A social institution need only break for a few hours to spark that civil war. Peace is kept through communication and understanding. It can only be held together by force for a short period of time.

>Anyway, thanks for an interesting discussion. I may not agree with your political philosophy, but I wish disagreements about political philosophy could be discussed as soberly and rationally as we'd discuss economic theory or music theory.

Politics should be boring. Nobody should really be discussing it. You get a single vote every few years. You should ignore politics and only update yourself on the current state of politics during the ~month before the election. That's not what is happening because we're on the verge of a not-election event.

>I'm exhausted by how polarised the atmosphere has got - and that certainly includes my own side (which more of us need to be able to admit), and also admittedly includes your own side (my exhaustion with the left wing doesn't cancel out my incomprehension at how utterly batshit most of the right wing has got recently - I mean, disagreeing with COVID lockdowns is fine and arguable and I would actually agree to a large extent, but whinging about being suffocated by fucking masks?? and fucking graven idols of fucking Donald Trump??? some of the people in your tribe are absolutely self-sabotagingly nutballs).

Take the ottawa freedom protest. For 2 years conservatives didnt march on ottawa. Only when the world started opening up because that's what the science said to do. Our PM saw the world opening up and instead of providing a roadmap and some dates for when we will open. He increased restrictions putting a bunch of people out of a job. Literally, 'you wont take the shot? fine you're not allowed to work and live anymore.'

A protest was inevitable to demand our human rights back. It was a legitimate protest. What did they do? They crushed the protest using force, seized bank accounts, arrested people for 'mischief' and the government news smeared them as nazi confederates.

covid restrictions are not that important. texas and florida had no mandates for how long at this point? Covid is just an excuse.

>For me, it all comes back to the Rawlsian framing of the veil of ignorance. That's the fundamental political question. We need to stop screaming at silly caricatured bogeymen of one another on the internet, but just sit down – as friends and family and colleagues and neighbours – and ask ourselves: "If, before I was born, with no knowledge of who I would become, I had to decide what the rules of my society should be: what would they be?" That's all there is, really.

I think that's what I am arguing for. That's what elon musk is arguing for.