Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

There are basically three epistemologies. There's the constructive (mathematical, proscriptive), the empirical (science, emotional), and trust. The constructive and empirical epistemologies don't separate as neatly as we would like them to, but a constructive argument basically looks like: "here's a thing that you definitely believe, and here is an implication of that, therefore you believe in the implication" aka modus ponens.

The empirical epistemology goes: "You have made a lot of observations, here's a simple explanation for all of them that you may go check", more or less the scientific method.

The trust based epistemology is just: "If I can establish facts about you, then I can establish facts about the things that you claim to believe, without having to see the receipts"

Each of these epistemologies has its own definition of argument, and they're all similar, but they're distinct, and the author isn't being clear about which one he means. In my estimation, the passages about ancient history are a reflection of him mistaking trust based arguments for empirical ones. This is a very common mistake.

An empirical argument is of the form "Here is the test that I used to differentiate my explanation from other explanations, and why I think this is a good test", whereas the trust based argument for the same explanation would be "Here is the data that my theory explains".

1) That leftist movements inevitably become more prone to violence (purges, genocide, violent repression of opponents in general, "reigns of terror") over time, and

2) Democracies have a strong-bordering-on-inescapable tendency to incubate such leftist movements, and to grow more leftist over time.

What we should expect to see, then:

1) Radical, violent leftist movements that gain power get ever-more violent over time.

2) Democracies become more unstable and prone to those specific sorts of violence, over time, and this unabated increase pushes ever closer to crisis points .

What we see instead is:

1) The worst leftist violence tends to be immediately preceded by authoritarian governments (which is what these fringe folks Scott's responding to want more of—this is a very specific and out-there movement making very specific and out-there claims, not the entire field of criticism of leftism or democracy), rather than to be preceded by democracy; to reach their fever-pitch very quickly; and to cool off over time rather than doing what we'd expect based on what was claimed to be true, which would be for them to typically get worse the more time passed.

2) Meanwhile, democracies seem... fairly stable, actually, without a clear, inevitably-trending-upward trend line on leftist-induced violence and chaos, or what have you. Fluctuating, sure, but where's the trend line for specifically that? Where are the ones ending in leftist reigns of terror? All of them are supposed to be heading toward a fever-pitch of leftist purges and genocide. Like, that specific thing is what was claimed. Does it look that way? LOL no.

I think what's key to following this is that the thing he's arguing against is a pretty fringe political view. He's not addressing some more-tame, more-mainstream criticism or model-for-the-development of either the left, or democracies, that might be stronger. He's trying to suss out whether the above, specifically, appears to describe actual, observable tendencies of leftism and democracies in the real world.

As I said in my post upthread that I referred to, I am not arguing for the claims that Scott is arguing against. (I do say that Scott's "Reactionary model" is a better historical fit to the cases he cites, but only with the key caveat I gave about the final step, and that caveat directly opposes the claims that Scott's "reactionaries" make based on that model.)

I am arguing against the claims that Scott is making about his "alternate model". His article is not just rebutting his version of "Reactionary". He is making claims of his own. Those are what I am addressing. I have already explicitly quoted claims that he makes that are historically false. Those claims are what support his "alternate model", which his article is arguing for.

This, in itself, is not an argument for the "reactionary" claims Scott is arguing against, for reasons I have already given. But it is an argument against Scott's "alternate model".

Also, democracies can grow more leftist over time (which, I would argue, they have) without becoming internally unstable, as long as a majority of voters continue to vote for policies that move further and further left. Which I think is a fair description of what has happened in "democracies" over the past century or more. Whether this tendency can continue indefinitely is a different question.