The Two Kinds of Moderate
paulgraham.com
The Two Kinds of Moderate
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Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#2[deleted]
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#3I like this part: “The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk.”
I think another way to slice this is, if you think of the Overton window shifting along the axis of time, the “accidental moderate” does not shift their opinion by the same factor as the ends of the window shift. The “accidental moderate”, in fact, shifts their opinion independent of the shifts of the window.
I just don’t know 100% if I’d use the term moderate as the it’s not necessarily true that all views will equally weight a view left of center with a view right of center (or vice-versa), and moderate could be perceived as synonymous with “average.”
Additionally, by even defining two types of moderate, there is a sense that the word “moderate” means something already. I don’t know, I feel like there could be a better word, maybe if you think of it as a graph there’s a graph-related term, but it’s not coming to mind!
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#4Tl;dr: Everything in moderation, including moderation.
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#5I'm intrigued by how this analysis fits in with increasingly 'tribal/team politics' - do intentional moderates try to appease every team?
Thinking out loud, I think this piece misses that aspect of team-seeking behavior. I know people who will recognise a good point against their side but will strive to ignore it because it works against their sense of loyalty to the team. I increasingly believe there are relatively few people who don't want/need that sense of identity.
[edit: the article doesn't really talk about sense of belonging, which I think is inherent in a lot of this discussion]
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#6I like this part: “The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk.” I think another way to slice this is, if you think of the Overton window shifting along the axis of time, the “accidental moderate” does not shift their opinion by the same factor as the ends of the window shift. The “accidental moderate”, in fact, shifts their opinion independent of the s…
> I think another way to slice this is, if you think of the Overton window shifting along the axis of time, the “accidental moderate” does not shift their opinion by the same factor as the ends of the window shift.
You can see this with the Republicans who turned into Democrats once the Republicans shifted far enough right that there were no more Rockefeller Republicans and Bill Clinton ran as a Democrat. If you're an accidental moderate, you run the risk of involuntarily changing party affiliation.
> I just don’t know 100% if I’d use the term moderate as the it’s not necessarily true that all views will equally weight a view left of center with a view right of center (or vice-versa), and moderate could be perceived as synonymous with “average.”
"Moderate" means "restrained" or "mild" as opposed to "extreme" or "severe" and has nothing to do with splitting the difference between whatever you think the extremes are. As a side note, a lot of people seem to not really know where the extremes actually are, and falsely attribute ideas to people. Deliberately splitting the difference is a tactic, something done to avoid seriously offending any part of the audience in order to keep viewership and readership numbers high. It also does horrible things to the facts when one side is right and one side is wrong and the news feels the need to pretend everyone has an equal claim to being correct.
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#7I got a bit confused by the terms, but it just landed. The intentional moderate has the intention to be moderate on all issues whereas the accidental ends up in a the center when you consider the whole range of issues.
Somewhere in there maybe is a different idea about 'tolerance'. The first might have a 'Live and let live'-position. The other actually believes plurality of lifestyles is a good thing. Somewhere along those lines ;)
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#8Group thinking should of course always be questioned, but I do not believe it is useful to equate any form of moderation with cowardice. Especially in the modern political climate.
http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/ https://www.quotes.net/mquote/770097
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#9Good thing this article has been posted.
We’ve been short of billionaires willing to share their opinions about why we should consider the incredible increase in concentrated wealth and the resurgence of monopoly business practices as “moderate” while the idea that maybe we should, you know, consider doing something to stop that, as “extreme” and “far left”.
There’s a couple tells in the article. But here’s a pretty clear one:
> Nearly all the most impressive people I know are accidental moderates
You can just map “impressive” to “rich” and “accidental moderate” to “uninterested in increased taxation or regulation in their own life despite their otherwise disparate political views” and the whole thing comes into focus pretty clearly.
Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate
#10I like this part: “The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk.” I think another way to slice this is, if you think of the Overton window shifting along the axis of time, the “accidental moderate” does not shift their opinion by the same factor as the ends of the window shift. The “accidental moderate”, in fact, shifts their opinion independent of the s…
Perhaps 'accidental moderate'='independent' and 'intentional moderate'='centrist'?