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Self-proclaimed centrists
There's that annoying air of superiority a lot of self-proclaimed centrists have over standing for nothing, not realizing that not having a position is a position in itself. Often, them claiming both sides are wrong is essentially an endorsement of the status quo, and people take advantage of this to shift the "centre." It's why the US Republican Party can get away with being far-right compared to the rest of the world.
I'd think "pragmatist" would be a more flattering term than "centrist", since it still implies taking an active position while being willing to adapt to the information you receive. "Centrist" just implies golden mean fallacy.
I'd think "pragmatist" would be a more flattering term than "centrist", since it still implies taking an active position while being willing to adapt to the information you receive. "Centrist" just implies golden mean fallacy.
Comments
So, basically this?
[user deleted]
"Centrist" implies that there exists a spectrum of ideas, and generally also implies that being in the middle of that spectrum is a good thing.
Policy doesn't work like that.
I don't see how use of the term "centrist" would imply that "being in the middle of that spectrum is a good thing". At least no more than "leftist" implies that being on the left is good.
[user deleted]
Is it okay to feel smug towards countries with two-party systems?
[user deleted]
What would be optimal amount of parties? India has six national parties, with several more state parties.
The answer to that is probably "depends on what the country is like".
Having political parties at all is an unfortunate necessity. I think it's always better to have a larger number of small ones than a few megaparties. There are more than N possible sets of political opinions, for any N.
You can also have a few political parties that never get elected but keep fringe idiots busy. I mean, we had the local NAMBLA equivalent trying to start one(the party platform included state-enforced vegetarianism and incentives to make Linux the default OS), which strikes me as more fruitful and hilarious than having them work on making their P2P porn rings more fedproof.
That kind of thing tends to exist even in two/three-party systems anyway, though.
this one doesn't sound so bad
^ Linux makes my brain hurt.
After that article on Red Tribe and Blue Tribe, I find it kinda hard not to try to be in the middle. I mean, I might be the flaccid my-gut-says-maybe, but at least I try to stay above the tribal mentality. Which quite probably means I'm smug and pretending to be better than the others or stuff, I dunno.
Didn't that article also mention the Gray Tribe(eg, nerdy libertarian-leaning centrists)? Also, the article got a follow-up: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/16/five-case-studies-on-politicization/
For some reason I remember only the follow-up. But you know what? By now I won't say anything more until I check if this article mentions any sort of Whatever Tribe made up of people who want to avoid being Blue, Red and Gray at the same time.
Yarp, You're obviously self-satisfied grey.
But seriously, as far as those things go, that article was a pretty interesting read, but the comments (as an aside, look out for a familiar face in said comments) show you how hard it is to live by those standards, it becomes just as much, or even more so, about the motives and methods, and with the former being certifiably unverifiable, it becomes a clusterfuck. I guess that's what makes me reticent to make a full jump into that sort of thinking, it's a bit too defeatist for my tastes. My self-made (codeword for unwittingly plagiarized) rule to cope for this situation is the following: Ask yourself, "what would make me change my mind?", if I cannot at least vaguely answer the question, it means that either my opinion is probably not well thought out enough, or that they are tied to a core value of mine. This latter case is not bad, per se, but it means that, when approaching discussions about the subject with other people, I have to understand that their core values might not coincide, or can even be radically different.
Is the familiar face Nornagest?
If there is anyone else, I definitely missed them.
And now I wonder how many tribes are there and how do they look like in my place. Seems like we've got at least a Blue/Pink/Rainbow/whatever and a White-Red, with a geriatric Red looking from the side.
edit: and possibly the mythical Onion/Beet, who may or may not be a subset of any of the three (presumably the two latter being the majority).
wow, this one is even smugger than the first one and he doesn't even apologize this timeSo, guys, I am tempted to claim those two articles were eye-opening. I'm not really fond of eye-opening, for reasons including a thought that this implies a lack of well-formed opinions previously, and an impression that this expression is a bit too commonly used in context of sets of opinions that I'm not really fond of (think of "Atlas Shrugged/The God Delusion/lesswrong.com was an eye opener for me"). So, I'm mildly concerned.
(edit reason: typo)
It's a framing problem. You can opt for "my opinions are constantly changing anyway and these sudden eye-openers are really just an accumulation of previous developments" or "you always think you have well-formed opinions until you're confronted with something to the contrary, and it's natural to try to see everything through said revelatory lens for some time afterwards, but that gradually goes away" or both.
Maybe you should revisit those sets of opinions, then!