Discrimination is obviously not a moral evil
To show that discrimination is wrong, one must show that it is unjust, and nobody does this. Hence, there is no ex-ante reason to assume claims of discrimination have any real moral weight.
Can there even be an abortion debate?
Pro-life advocates cannot coherently advocate that abortion is wrong while also arguing that it is necessarily illegitimate to commit any acts of civil disobedience in defence of the unborn.
The asymmetry of appealing to authority
Almost all arguments will ultimately rely on some form of appeal to authority. If rationalists are disappointed by the insubstantiality of their own appeals, perhaps they should consider a philosophy that vindicates appeals to authority more rigorously.
The Rothschilds don’t control the media, but that doesn’t mean the media isn’t stupid
Whether it be due to excessively tight deadlines, poor-quality cadets, ideological echo chambers, or just plain-old laziness, there’s very little case to be made that The Discourse in the media accurately reflects reality in any real sense.
Preferences are logically prior to incentive structures
If we want to say “it is immoral to try and influence people’s preferences because [insert boringly stupid Rawlsian reason here]”, then we should just say that, not pretend that the problem is far harder to solve than it actually is because we’ve restricted ourselves to assuming that everyone’s preference relation is purely self-interested and…
The atomised-individual dynamic
Karen Stenner’s The Authoritarian Dynamic is a seminal collection of evidence on when and how authoritarianism affects polities, but the nuance that she offers above and beyond previous investigations into authoritarianism begins to invite questions about whether it is “authoritarians” who are truly the voters that should puzzle political psychologists.
Academia, it’s time for a schism
Oliver Traldi proposes that academia can solve its current polarisation by focussing on the epistemic justification of knowledge. I argue the schisms of Protestantism indicate this is likely to fail.
Peterson’s “Darwinian truth” makes no sense for the New Testament
Peterson’s appeals to a mythological interpretation of the New Testament are fundamentally at odds with the historical evidence we have of how New Testament authors viewed what they were writing.
The theodicy of Dark
Dark fulfils the theodicy expressed by Dostoevsky: Evil exists because of the lies of Man, and all the suffering of innocents is preventable, but at the end “there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all human hearts”.
What equality of opportunity are you owed?
Society does not owe me a fair opportunity to become the next Brad Pitt. And society does not owe any of us a fair opportunity to become a lawyer, doctor, or academic.
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Bad Social Science Analysis 