[forgottenpass]

>I'm pretty clearly undermining the idea that there exists an authority that can identify the social ill of "purity spirals".

You can't undermine a point nobody is really making. Maybe someone is making it somewhere, but tracking back up this comment chain I can't find it. 8 levels up probably_wrong explicitly says "No one" is such an authority. And further asserts that the type of claims suggest that the question is of a type where such an authority can not exist.

If I had to guess, what you actually want to do is tell people off for making and sharing personal assessments of social situations to the best of their own abilities and doing it at a lower evidentiary standard than you're comfortable with. If so, have the courage of your convictions to admit you think that either (A) nobody should do that at all, or (B) you're so much more better at it than them that they shouldn't do it. Or maybe (C) tell them to stop because you disagree but don't want to wade into such imprecise debate.

From the outside, you're not articulating your point well enough to avoid looking like epistemological flailing.

[tomlockwood]

> If so, have the courage of your convictions to admit you think

Well that's not "so", so I'm not going to admit something that isn't so.

> From the outside,

How are you simultaneously discussing this with me while being outside the discussion?

> You can't undermine a point nobody is really making.

Excellent! If people are making the point, I'm undermining it, and if they don't think they're accessing objective truth in this discussion, my observations in my comments still stand. shove