[thesteamboat]

I largely agree with you and think that my views fall closer to yours than the GPs. I'd endorse free speech absolutism as probably the best system in the vein of "Democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others". That being said

> Even if, like me, you think conservative ideas are generally worse than liberal ideas, you should want conservatives to rally around the best, most respectable conservative ideas rather around the worst ideas. They aren't going to convert from bad conservative ideas to good liberal ideas by way of coercion or suppression; rather, the best hope is for conservatives to see their best, most respectable ideas face off against the best, most respectable liberal ideas so that if/when they lose, as many as possible feel that their side's ideas were given a fair shot and they perhaps leave with a changed opinion (even if only incrementally).

I fully agree with this sentiment, but I think it misdiagnoses the biggest problem facing speech on the right. As I see it, the main problem is not ring wing views being drummed out of centrist publications (though this undoubtedly does happen and is a problem). Rather, it is instead 'respectable' conservative ideas being driven out of rightwing circles in favor of anti-intellectualism and conspiratorial nonsense.

I acknowledge the context of this article is bad behavior by censorious figures, I'll admit it is a serious free speech problem, but unfortunately I must dispute that it is the most important.

I think the mirror of this on the left manifests as performative wokeness, e.g. using whatever leftist language is at hand as a cudgel to settle political scores.

> It shouldn't surprise us that abandoning objectivity and neutrality for relativism and activism in our epistemological institutions would degrade trust and result in a rise of extremists; this is not only intuitive, but it's a historical pattern.

I'd moderate this statement slightly. We never had objectivity -- that's just an impossible yardstick for humans in human institutions. What we had was something like the pretense of objectivity, which was probably good enough for what we needed. I don't think people are wrong to point out that the old standards of objectivity were X which is problematic (where X might be white, or male or cis, or christian, or upper middle class, etc.) I agree that, granting this failing, explicitly turning to subjectivity is a bad response. But I think that needs to be explicitly argued to our friends on the left who might be tempted into the left's censorship spiral, and to just sweep it under the rug as an assumption will make them distrust your argument.

[throwaway894345]

> I fully agree with this sentiment, but I think it misdiagnoses the biggest problem facing speech on the right. As I see it, the main problem is not ring wing views being drummed out of centrist publications (though this undoubtedly does happen and is a problem). Rather, it is instead 'respectable' conservative ideas being driven out of rightwing circles in favor of anti-intellectualism and conspiratorial nonsense.

I think we're saying something very similar here? This is what I meant when I said "you should want conservatives to rally around the best, most respectable conservative ideas rather around the worst ideas".

To be clear, I think the "conservatives being driven out of epistemological institutions" (not "centrist spaces") and "the rise of anti-intellectualism in rightwing spaces" are two symptoms of the same phenomena (so while I might agree that one symptom is worse than the other, the cure is the same). Notably, when we regard everything right of far-left as "uniformly evil" then you erase any incentive that would otherwise cause respectable rightwing ideas to rise above unsavory rightwing ideas.

> I'd moderate this statement slightly. We never had objectivity -- that's just an impossible yardstick for humans in human institutions.

Objectivity and neutrality were ideals that we held much like equality, but to your point we never perfected them (I never meant to imply otherwise).

> I don't think people are wrong to point out that the old standards of objectivity were X which is problematic (where X might be white, or male or cis, or christian, or upper middle class, etc.) I agree that, granting this failing, explicitly turning to subjectivity is a bad response. But I think that needs to be explicitly argued to our friends on the left who might be tempted into the left's censorship spiral, and to just sweep it under the rug as an assumption will make them distrust your argument.

Yes, to be quite clear, we have failed at various points in history to perfectly uphold our ideals. The whole deal with "progress" is that we want to advance toward our ideals, and if we're really progressing, the past ought to be less moral than the present. There's merit in pointing out failures to prioritize identity over objectivity, but the left errs on the remedy: in response to prioritizing a white identity politics over objectivity they respond by prioritizing an anti-white identity politics over objectivity. The correct response is to prioritize objectivity over identity politics altogether, at least assuming we want to live in a world that is prosperous, just, harmonious, etc.