One of the worst things happening in political discourse right now is the “denounce X” demand. You’re expected to publicly reject certain claims or people will assume you’re a bad person. The problem isn’t whether any specific claim is right or wrong. The problem is that these demands turn factual questions into loyalty tests.
When someone asks “Do you denounce the claim that X?” they’re not actually trying to figure out what’s true. They’re asking which team you’re on. They’re replacing “What does the evidence say?” with “Whose side are you on?” This creates a situation where asking questions looks like you’re endorsing answers, where looking at evidence is treated like you’re pushing an agenda, where admitting uncertainty makes you look suspicious, and where getting to the truth means surviving a bunch of social attacks first.
The real damage isn’t just that people can’t say certain things. It’s that they can’t even think about them. The question becomes “Am I allowed to wonder about this?” instead of “Is this true?” Healthy conversation requires being able to examine claims, even uncomfortable ones, without everyone treating it like a test of your morality. We should be able to separate looking at evidence from drawing conclusions, and separate asking questions from making assertions.
When we lose that ability, we don’t make conversations more moral. We just make them more dishonest
Replies (6)
dont disagree that tribalism makes certain topics taboo but i dont think its a new phenomena
we have been fighting each other since the beginning
What I think has changed is the scale and speed of it.
In the past, your tribe was your village, your church, your union hall. The social punishment for breaking taboos was local and you could see it coming. Now your tribe is global and algorithmically amplified. You can lose your job, your reputation, and your relationships with people you’ve never met based on a single statement taken out of context.
So yeah, the human tendency is ancient. But the machinery we’ve built to enforce it is unprecedented.
In fairness, many of these people aren't replacing "what does the evidence say" because they never looked at evidence to begin with. In other words, for many of these people it's business as usual.
I agree with everything you are saying but the post implies that this is something new. That people are no longer using evidence to determine their beliefs and values. I don't think this is true. I think most people ignore evidence and it's always been that way.
Fair point. You’re right that most people have never been particularly rigorous about following evidence, and I’m probably romanticizing the past a bit. But I think what’s changed isn’t that average people got worse at reasoning. It’s that the people who do want to think through difficult questions now face much higher costs for doing so publicly.
online harrassment sucks yes
losing your job is balls yes
the scale of harassment today is outrageous yes
but I just think about periods a few hundred years ago where people were killed after someone accused them of being a witch
or were getting tortutured and killed because of their faith
this kind of stuff happens today we don't even have to go back in time
we've been doing absolutely vile and horrendous stuff to each other since forever and using all sorts of justification
usually some religious authority says its ok maybe even the best thing for them
so yes i hundred percent agree with you - we should be able to critically examine everything and not get beaten up or killed because of it
You have to be careful when reflecting on the past. Humans have a bias toward the past that tends to overestimate how good things used to be. Remember that people who questioned beliefs about a flat earth being the center of the universe were met with aggression and ridicule. Humans are hardly rational.
