Comment by hn_throwaway_99

The ironic thing to me is that the author essentially makes this the main point right from the get go:

> The insidious nature of this question comes from the false representation as earnest, intellectual discourse. Many who ask it may truly believe they’re engaging earnestly, but their responses quickly reveal an angle more akin to religious police.

As you point out, nearly all of talkingtab's questions are loaded. At the very least, talkingtab essentially says outright what they expect the "correct" answer to be, e.g I'm baffled why talkingtab seems to think "inflation" is a "code word". I speak English, and inflation is "telling it like it is" based on the simple definition of the word.

As another example, for this question:

> Are common Americans paid a living wage? Can one person earn enough to have a family?

What happens if a response is "No, I don't believe that cashiers at McDonald's deserve to be paid a 'living wage', because I don't believe that job is intended to support a family on its own"? To emphasize, I'm not saying what the "right" answer is, but I do believe reasonable people can disagree over what constitutes a living wage and which jobs deserve to be paid it.

If anything, talkingtab's post just highlights to me the author's specific point about political "tribes" vs political views, and if anything has convinced me more that the author's view is spot on here.

JumpCrisscross 7 days ago

> the author essentially makes this the main point right from the get go

Then find better friends. The author is essentially complaining about the quality of his friends.

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hn_throwaway_99 7 days ago

Ah, yes, those pesky humans and their cognitive biases...

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- JumpCrisscross 6 days ago
  
  > Ah, yes, those pesky humans and their cognitive biases...
  This is sort of meaningless without citation of the bias you claim.
  In case you're being serious: yes; you can find friends who won't shit on you for your views.
  
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keybored 7 days ago

My read is that talkingtab’s agenda here is to focus the conversation on what politics is. Rather than being this thing you discuss with people (or not) it’s about injustice against the majority. So why does that get brought up? Because with the OP it’s easy to end up concluding that politics to the average person is something you choose to idly or deliberately or max-brainpower chatter with other people about. Then it can be easily thought that it’s just about differing policy positions. But talkingtab is saying that it’s more confrontational than that.

So why are the questions “loaded”? Because as you can see with your own eyes, they have their own political agenda. Part of politics is defining what the the agenda should be—and what should be considered political.

As you can imagine, people who think they are arguing or fighting on behalf of people making a living wage etc. want to put that message out there. They are not discussing abstract concepts or competing in some open-mindedness competition or some rationality contest. It matters to them.

> If anything, talkingtab's post just highlights to me the author's specific point about political "tribes" vs political views, and if anything has convinced me more that the author's view is spot on here.

You are even more convinced. Yet there is nothing here that suggests that talkingtab is tribal in the sense of what the OP is talking about. None. Is this received opinion or opinion born from studying like a monk for 10 years? You don’t know.

You also say that talkingtab is presenting what the “correct” answer is. Yes, according to them. Again, is it really tribalism? Or is it conviction as well as the polemic tone of the whole comment? And having conviction doesn’t mean that you cannot conceive of people having other opinions, or being intellectually unable to present counter-arguments to their own position. Again, no proof of tribalism is presented.

And this focus on tribalism presupposes that the end goal is to find your tone. Alternatively you can look at their arguments. Maybe they want to change the flaws they perceive in the world.

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